Thursday, May 04, 2006

THE GENTLEMAN FROM PROVIDENCE. H.P Lovecraft (seen here holding his lunch) is, without doubt, the greatest horror writer of the 20th century; on a par with Edgar Allan Poe or any others you may care to mention. Lovecraft's dimension-spanning tales of the horribly monstrous "Great Old Ones" (who had dominion over this universe and our Earth millions of years before man) include such demonic entities as Yog Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and the ever popular Cthulhu (not to mention the fabled forbidden book known as the Necronomicon). Lovecraft has also probably influenced more writers than any other author besides Ernest Hemingway. Think about it. As great as J.R.R. Tolkien is, you don't see many people creating new tales of Middle Earth. One or two, maybe, but not the literally HUNDREDS of authors who have used Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" as the basis for their short stories and novels. Name another author who has spawned such a vast number of tributes and pastiches in the world of horror writing. A superb HPL biography (more like an extended essay) is Michel Houellebecq's "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" which celebrates his writing while not shying from HPL's very real faults and foibles. I strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Lovecraft. The thin tome is fleshed out by the inclusion of two of HPL's short stories: "The Call of Cthulhu" (which you can listen to in audiobook version by clicking here!) and "The Whisperer In Darkness". I have gone on record in the past as naming "The Colour Out of Space" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" as my favourites but there are just too many great stories from which to choose! As for the world of motion pictures, Lovecraft has not faired particularly well; HPL's cosmic horrors have proven remarkably difficult to film. Only recently (as was also the case with Tolkien) has technology advance sufficiently to make filming them possible. Such films as "The Haunted Palace" starring Vincent Price, ""Die, Monster, Die" starring Boris Karloff and "The Dunwich Horror" starring Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee (!) have made valiant but doomed efforts to successfully bring HPL to the screen; the movies remain pretty good but fail in conjuring the spirit that is Lovecraft. Later, director Stuart Gordon has made numerous attempts including the wonderful "Re-Animator" and the recent "Masters of Horror" episode of "Dreams in the Witch House". I am also rather partial to Gordon's recent film "Dagon" (click here to watch trailer) which is very close in spirit to ole HPL. However, if you have never experienced the purple prose and cosmic horror of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, rush right out and read some! If for no other reason than this: when the Great Cthulhu stirs from his slumber and our tenuous grasp on this universe is wrested from us by the mind-blasting, eldritch horror of the Great Old Ones. . . .well, you will have been forewarned!

3 comments:

Pax Romano said...

Sadly, Lovecraft was real bastard and a notorious racist...that said, you are right his fiction is most disturbing and dark stuff; Stephen King has made numerous claims that Lovecraft is one of his main inspirations...

Unknown said...

The Dunwich Horror was on my curriculum in college. Yup. School is awesome. And I just read that "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" was the inspiration for a Buffy episode. (As you know, I am always mere seconds away from bringing up Buffy or food.)

Now, how do you feel about all these authors who release books "based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft", and everyone jumps all over them even though they're pale imitations of the originals. That's like every horror writer now saying "based on the style of Stephen King!" or "blatantly ripping off Dean Koontz!" I guess it just rings false to me. But the Lovecraft estate has been generous in the use of his name.

Cerpts said...

Oh yes, he was a definite racist. Anyone who tries to gloss over that fact is lying to himself. However, paradoxically his wife was Jewish and he supposedly hated Jews. So go figure the workings of the human mind. My policy is not to blame the sins of the fathers on the children; in that way I can enjoy a person's work without admiring the person. After all, Elia Kazan made some pretty good movies and look what he did.

A Buffy episode based on Innsmouth?!?!? Why have I never been shown this episode before?!?!?!?!?!

A side note: check out the new Weird NJ magazine wherein we are reminded of HPL's frequent visits to our own state via the town of Elizabeth. HPL, with his penchant for using language at least a century old, always referred to it as "Elizabethtown".