It’s funny to think about how those descriptions of the murals have inspired so many others to write stories based off that information. And yeah, Lovecraft certainly isn’t one for brevity.
Solid recommendation, but for the record, atypical of Lovecraft in some important ways. As I’ve said, I don’t think he was a very thoughtful writer, but you can get wrong ideas about him from reading Colour Out of Space! Most of Lovecraft’s victims are “asking for it” in the sense of “staring too deep into the abyss etc., etc.”. Colour is just about some poor farmers who happened to be standing underneath a meteorite.
(And one of the reasons I love the Richard Stanley adaptation is because he “fixed” the story.)
Yep, more or less. But only one of them is coherent by the time they get back, and he’s writing the story specifically to discourage another expedition that’s about to leave for the Antarctic. But, yeah, that flight back must have sucked. But unlike a lot of Lovecraft, I really like where and how he ended it. The literal last words, set during the flight back, are perfect:
“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
My starting recommendation for new readers is The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It’s chock full of problematic bits if you know about Lovecraft’s personal views, but if you don’t then its a rollicking good “evil village” horror story with a creature feature bolted on. Plus, its fun to go back to once you’ve devoured more Lovecraft and read about his real fears.
These dudes have made radio plays of a number of stories and the production values are quite good.
The Shadow Out of Time has always been a favorite for me.
It’s true. More precisely, Colour Out of Space is my recommendation for “I’m going to read one Lovecraft story, so give me the one that is most worth my time”–not necessarily what strummer was asking for. But Colour has, for lack of a better term, the most literary merit of all his stories, and dips into his characteristic cosmic horror without a lot of the… I’m going to say “nerdbait”? The references to Al-Hazred and Pnakotic Manuscripts and mindless pipers in the Court of Azathoth. I love it. You love it. Someone’s gotta be ready to go pretty deep if they want to love it too.
There has been so much better stuff that could be described as ‘Lovecraftian’ than anything that Lovecraft actually wrote, it’s pretty amazing.
Since reading it, I’ve thought of Gaiman’s Only the End of the World Again as a fun companion/cousin story to The Shadows Over Innsmouth. In this case Larry Talbot, Adjuster, finds himself on a case in Innsmouth.
That’s a hell of a cover for Lovecraft.
Still, I guess it’s probably less completely unrelated than this very cool and spooky cover from one of the collections I originally encountered:
Like, that’s a baller horror cover that has zero to do with anything inside.
I had this one, which actually has the above image on the spine. You can see a bit of it on the left.
Yeah, that’s the one I had, as well, bought at a shitty outlet mall bookstore in Pigeon Forge.
I tried to like Lovecraft but I thought his prose was a bit labored and overstyled and didn’t earn its length. I’d rather read Howard’s more straight ahead Conan prose. I tend to stall out when reading Lovecraft. I should probably give him another try but life is short. I have a game backlog, a book backlog, and a TV and movie backlog. I can’t seem to catch up.
What is the number one best Lovecraft story to read? What will sell me on him?
Lovecraft is objectively a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad writer. (Some might say that’s part of the appeal.)
If you’ve read any of the hits (the stuff that RPGs or Arkham Horror scenarios or movies you’ve heard of have been named after) and aren’t into the prose, congratulations! You have good taste. His real strength was in his fucked-up imagination. And that’s been adapted to (and influenced) many movies, games, and even other stories by other people that surpass the source material, as far as “experiences worth having” go. Stick with those. Great imagination, though.
Heh. Interesting take. Yeah, I can’t say I think his style is his strong point.
Heh. In the 21st Century, Red Hook is a quaint, peaceful, almost “urban-pastoral” refuge, on account of the subway doesn’t go there.
When the Ikea was getting built, people 'bout shit their pants, imagining traffic and chaos. It didn’t change things all that much, from what I understand.
Also, kinda funny that Lovecraft busted out the word “ancient” to describe something that was, I mean, less than 300 years old. That’s ancient by Lovecraft standards??? I thought Lovecraft-ancient would be more digits than the human mind could fathom!
I recently got back into Howard after not reading him since I was a kid and man his prose is so much more “modern” than Lovecraft. Obviously his stuff has some problematic elements too, but none of it comes close to Lovecraft’s bigotry. Howard is usually my example for anyone that tries to say Lovecraft was just a product of his time.
Completely agree about Howard. The Conan stories absolutely hold up. I have Kull and Solomon Kane anthologies on hold at the library.
“West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.”
It’s not particularly long.