I originally discovered H.P. Lovecraft because in the 1970\u2019s the Ballantine Fantasy book imprint put out a series of paperback books of Lovecraft\u2019s stories that sported covers that were wonderfully disturbing.\u00a0 The one called \u201cThe Shuttered Room\u201d had an image of a human head with sharp shards of glass sticking out of the forehead and cranium area.\u00a0 The eyes were alert but the head terminated at about the upper lip. Below that it was just a dripping ooze of decay.\u00a0 How could I resist?<\/p>\n
The world divides into two camps.\u00a0 Those who think H. P. Lovecraft was a great writer and those who don\u2019t.\u00a0 I fall solidly into the second camp.\u00a0 Now don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 I don\u2019t hate the guy and some of his writing is somewhat interesting. \u00a0 But his writing style (if it can be called that) makes you want to throw the book at a wall or tear it in half. \u00a0Plot twists are telegraphed so blatantly that surprise is virtually impossible.\u00a0 The plots themselves are sometimes so badly contrived as to suspend the suspension of disbelief in even the most sympathetic reader.\u00a0 The prose is so arch and artificial that it descends into self-parody.\u00a0 Sometimes he appears to be imitating Edgar Allen Poe but Lovecraft never makes it work for him.\u00a0 So that\u2019s my case against him.<\/p>\n
That being said, I think Lovecraft had a very powerful imagination.\u00a0 Buried inside some of his stories are elements that strike a nerve.\u00a0 Sometimes he\u2019ll describe a scene or paint an image that resonates.\u00a0 Something primal and disturbing.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost as if he could pluck things out of his nightmares and embed them into a framework of poorly written and inept story elements.\u00a0 I believe that Lovecraft\u2019s horror talent was of a visual nature.\u00a0 I have a theory that the best way to present his work is cinematically.\u00a0 If a writer\/director was sufficiently attuned to what is authentically frightening in Lovecraft\u2019s works, I believe films based on some of his stories could be much better than the stories that Lovecraft left us.\u00a0 But is there enough there?\u00a0 The stories are a hodge-podge of plot elements and scenes.\u00a0 Quite a bit of work would be needed to create a movie from any or even several of them strung together.\u00a0 And is there actually enough of an audience to even warrant the expense of a major motion picture? \u00a0Director Guillermo del Toro attempted to bring \u201cAt the Mountains of Madness\u201d to the screen but failed. \u00a0\u00a0So, we\u2019re stuck with the stories.<\/p>\n
In this series of posts, I will give a few examples of what I think is some of his worst writing and then I\u2019ll finish with some things that I felt were well done.<\/p>\n
The first story is \u201cThe Whisperer in the Darkness.\u201d\u00a0 This is the story of two New Englanders communicating mostly by letter about an infestation of super-intelligent space-faring winged, giant lobster-shaped fungus creatures in northern Vermont.<\/p>\n
There are many examples of terrible prose to choose from but one of my favorite passages is the one where the narrator recognizes the lobster man\u2019s footprints, \u201cToo well did I know the marks of those loathsome nippers, and that hint of ambiguous direction which stamped the horrors as no creatures of this planet.\u00a0 No chance had been left me of merciful mistake.\u00a0 Here, indeed, in objective form before my own eyes, and surely not made many hours ago, were at least three marks which stood out blasphemously among the surprising plethora of blurred footprints leading to and from the Akeley farmhouse.\u00a0 They were the hellish tracks of the living fungi from Yuggoth<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 (italics by HPL).\u00a0 So, the footprints are blasphemous?\u00a0 I\u2019ve got 12 years of Catholic school education and not once were lobsters mentioned except as an abstention during Lent but no blasphemy angle.\u00a0 And he calls them the living fungi.\u00a0 If they weren\u2019t alive wouldn\u2019t the story be kind of pointless?<\/p>\n So here we have a giant lobster that walks upright and apparently is able to propel itself through interstellar space on wings.\u00a0 Also, even though these creatures have technology that allows them to traverse intergalactic space, wage war on super-intelligent aliens and remove human brains from their bodies and keep them alive and sentient inside a metal tank they are unable to prevent themselves from being drowned in the flooding of small Vermont streams and are also highly incompetent when confronted by a farmyard protected by an old man with a rifle assisted by his german shepherd dogs.<\/p>\n And one of the dopiest plot holes is the fact that every night the old man would withstand a siege at his farmhouse by these creatures but by the next day, he was free to go unmolested for miles in every direction to buy bullets and new guard dogs and even post the letters that were the text of the story.\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t he just keep driving until he got to Montpelier and then show the authorities the proof of his discovery.\u00a0 Or at the very least just drive away and escape altogether?\u00a0 Was he afraid the lobstermen would come after him in Boston or Providence.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t they be kind of conspicuous with the wings and claws and fishy smell?\u00a0 And also New Englanders really like lobster meat.\u00a0 I\u2019d think of this whole invasion as a sort of food business start-up opportunity for the protagonists.<\/p>\n In addition to the ludicrous details of the flying-lobster-mushroom-men is the absurdity of the protagonist being unaware that one of the lobster men is dressed up as his friend and talking to him in the same room.\u00a0 Endless clues are provided that point obviously to the identity of the \u201cWhisperer\u201d but apparently the narrator is possessed of such indestructible stupidity that at the end of the story he is shocked to discover the truth.\u00a0 Maybe this is Lovecraft imitating some 19th<\/sup> century gothic horror story convention.\u00a0 But it\u2019s just plain ridiculous.<\/p>\n This story more than any other had me for a while entertaining the idea that Lovecraft was actually writing comedy.\u00a0 I was imagining John Belushi or Chevy Chase dressed in a giant lobster suit with big floppy wings and covered with mushroom decals sitting across a dining room table from Wallace Shawn performing the dialogue from \u201cMy Dinner with Andre.\u201d<\/p>\n Then I wondered if Lovecraft was a morphine addict.\u00a0 But finally, I settled on the obvious reason.\u00a0 He was a starving hack writer chronically broke and churning out dreck as best he could.\u00a0 And this was what he produced.\u00a0 Very sad.<\/p>\n Stay tuned for more Lovecraft complaining soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I originally discovered H.P. Lovecraft because in the 1970\u2019s the Ballantine Fantasy book imprint put out a series of paperback books of Lovecraft\u2019s stories that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,237,4,242],"tags":[258,255,257,70,259,256],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-chevy-chase","tag-h-p-lovecraft","tag-john-belushi","tag-lovecraft","tag-shawn-wallace","tag-the-whisperer-in-the-darkness"],"yoast_head":"\n