| Title | : | The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 811 |
| Publication | : | First published November 1, 1978 |
The eBook’s table of contents is listed below. It includes the year each story was written.
The Tomb (1917)
Dagon (1917)
Polaris (1918)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
Memory (1919)
Old Bugs (1919)
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919)
The White Ship (1919)
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919)
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)
The Terrible Old Man (1920)
The Tree (1920)
The Cats of Ulthar (1920)
The Temple (1920)
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920)
The Street (1920)
Celephaïs (1920)
From Beyond (1920)
Nyarlathotep (1920)
The Picture in the House (1920)
Ex Oblivione (1921)
The Nameless City (1921)
The Quest of Iranon (1921)
The Moon-Bog (1921)
The Outsider (1921)
The Other Gods (1921)
The Music of Erich Zann (1921)
Herbert West — Reanimator (1922)
Hypnos (1922)
What the Moon Brings (1922)
Azathoth (1922)
The Hound (1922)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Rats in the Walls (1923)
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923)
The Shunned House (1924)
The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
He (1925)
In the Vault (1925)
The Descendant (1926)
Cool Air (1926)
The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Pickman’s Model (1926)
The Silver Key (1926)
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927)
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
The Very Old Folk (1927)
The Thing in the Moonlight (1927)
The History of the Necronomicon (1927)
Ibid (1928)
The Dunwich Horror (1928)
The Whisperer in Darkness (1930)
At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)
The Dreams in the Witch House (1932)
The Thing on the Doorstep (1933)
The Evil Clergyman (1933)
The Book (1933)
The Shadow out of Time (1934)
The Haunter of the Dark (1935)
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft Reviews
-
I'm going to read the whole of this book in
2019, 2020 20212022, in order (most recently read at top.)
Planning for a lot more Lovecraftian tales in 2022 (and possibly 2023...)
16/Oct/22: 48: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: Up next...
16/Oct/22: 47: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: My first DNF. After more than an hour invested, I just don't care what the hell happens in Randolph Carter's dream world which is a hot mess of an anything and everything goes non-story reading like stream of consciousness writing. 0 'DNF Not a Story,' stars.
30/Aug/22: 46: The Strange High House in the Mist: A philosopher of means (but still unemployed) finds his way to a mysterious lonely house atop a high seaward crag. He communes with a number of dreamlike oceanic entities and then returns to solid suburbia, touched, but untouched, he leaves the mysteries behind and never seeks them again. 3, 'Mysteriously Fishy,' stars.
27/Aug/22: 45: The Silver Key: An elegiac tale of lost childhood and its seeming return through death (or traveling beyond the veil...). 5, 'The Dream is the Thing,' stars.
22/Aug/22: 44: Pickman's Model: A sensitive art critic discovers that his favorite artist draws inspiration from photographs of the real world ... and promptly dumps him for painting demons! 4, 'Shattered Illusions,' stars
09/Aug/22: 43: The Call of Cthulhu: (This one's a reread as I read it years ago before I was acquainted with Lovecraft's peculiar style...). A sceptical explorer creates a virtual spider diagram of pieces of evidence revealing the existence of an ancient world-wide cult worshipping the ultimate cosmic horror - Cthulhu. 5 'Wish I Didn't Know,' stars.
08/Aug/22: 42: Cool Air: Young boarding house lodger discovers his animated upstairs neighbour has been dead for quite a long time. 4 'It's a REFRIGERATION UNIT!' stars.
28/July/22: 41: The Descendant: Lord Northam with his endless search for experience beyond the everyday = Frank, from Hellraiser!!! 3 'Don't look beyond,' stars.
... a long break here ...
21/Sept/21: 40: In the Vault: In an echo of Procrustes and his bed, an undertaker falls afoul of vengeance from beyond the grave. 3 'Measure Your Coffin Correctly,' stars.
18/Sept/21: 39: He: A youthful poet seeks 'Wonderment,' in the alleys and byways of New York. Accepts a stranger as a guide and quickly finds himself within an ancient realm of otherworldly horrors. Barely escapes with his mind and body intact. Kinda dragged in spots, although the creature known as 'He,' was inventive. 3 'Beware Strangers in New York,' stars.
19/Jul/21: 38: The Horror at Red Hook: Daft Detective Imbroglio! Mad or just Maddening! "Well I chased the perp through an interdimensional portal to a place right out of a Hieronymus Bosch fever dream filled with diabolical entities. But I kept my mouth shut as who would ever believe me. It was better to just pretend I was temporarily mad." Detective Malone has a brush with a devil-worshipping cult which almost sends him mad. Slow to start, and not very gripping, but not horrible. 3 'Loathsome Cults in the Slums,' stars.
14/Jul/21: 37: The Shunned House: A haunted house tale that started very, very slowly, then hooked me in with awesome suspense, and a rare 'almost,' happy-ever-after for the narrator. 5 'Spooky Eldritch Cellar Dweller,' stars.
14/Jun/20: 36: The Festival: An ancient fishing village, masked guides, secret rites that predate humanity, loathsome indescribable squirming horrors in subterranean caverns. But was it only a nightmare? This one ticked all the boxes. 5 'Horrors! No! - It was real!' stars
12/Jun/20: 35: The Unnamable: The Unnamable remains unknown and underwhelming. 2 'Perplexed,' stars.
(Geez, a 6 month break...)
12/Jan/20: 34: The Rats in the Walls: Elegantly written with little hints thrown here and there, but then it turns right on the end into unutterable horror... 5 'Stark Raving Mad,' stars.
08/Jan/20: 33: The Lurking Fear: Break out the shovels. Degenerate colonials have become loathsome abominable mole-rat-beast men rising from underground lairs to feast upon the surface dwellers. Kinda dragged in spots. 3 'Morlocks Rise,' stars.
That said ... HPL is really starting to illustrate the situation where someone has discovered something so horrifying that they wish they had never ever known about it - i.e. Ignorance is bliss. and there are terrific lines like 'I retain no distinct impression save of wild-armed titan trees, daemonic mutterings of thunder, and Charonian shadows athwart the low mounds that dotted and streaked the region.' - Now this left me with a vivid, visceral impression of someone running from a vast and overwhelming horror. Good writing here. I think that HPL is more visual than I'd previously given him credit for.
19/Dec/19: 32: The Hound: A cautionary tale upon the topic of avoiding charismatic young men named St. John, demonism, the Necronomicon, grave robbing, cursed jade amulets, stocking museums with artifacts stolen from graves, lonely moors, decrepit manors, solitude, dissipation, flocks of bats - and smoking (well actually not smoking...) - 3 'Beneath a Livid Sky,' stars.
19/Dec/19: 31: Azathoth: A vignette of modern alienation, of dreams chasing long lost vistas, where persistence is ultimately rewarded with gentle bliss. Lacks a story and who the frack was Azathoth?- 2 'Thankfully Short,' stars
17/Dec/19: 30. What the Moon Brings: It's the moon's fault, evil thing that it is, not the drugs, not the opiates, not the multi-colored imaginings of LSD, inspiring terror and suicide. 1 'Drug Induced,' star. (fortunately this was also very short.)
16/Dec/19: 29. Hypnos: "Just what happened is unknown, ..." and shall remain that way. 3 'Unknowable,' stars (or perhaps zero, or an infinity...) - Beware sleep!
04/Feb/19: 28. Herbert West - Reanimator: Now the genius is revealed. Macabre horror at its best. Weird, wonderful, shocking, imaginative, powerful. 5 'Unable to Look Away,' stars.
03/Feb/19: 27. The Music of Erich Zann: An out-of-work philosopher (is there any other sort?) discovers a mute with a musical bent for defending against eldritch horrors of a cosmic persuasion. A defense that is weakening... 5 'Spooky,' stars.
03/Feb/19: 26. The Other Gods: A Hubris breeds Nemesis tale as Barzai the Wise does something quite foolish - and is never heard of again. 2 'Just Another Over-reach Tale Masquerading as Fantasy History Guff...' stars.
03/Feb/19: 25. The Outsider: Self-awareness can be a horrible shock - especially if you are an uncanny, eldritch, apparition of horrific demeanor unfit for cultured company. Still, forgetfulness is a balm for such sorrowful knowledge - however it seems a tad disingenuous to claim loss of memory when talking about it! 3 'Red Pill,' stars.
01/Feb/19: 24. The Moon-Bog: (Thankfully, back amongst the contemporary fantasy) HPL's interpretation of the Sidhe of Ireland, defend a bog from being drained by a rich Irish/American and his northern Ireland laborers. Of course, everyone seems to have been uncannily transformed by eldritch powers of cosmic horror into fat and ugly frogs. 4 'Don't Mess with Nature,' stars.
01/Feb/19: 23. The Quest of Iranon: An immortal bard fruitlessly seeks an audience for the music 'wot 'e wrote.' - Remains an unknown. Humanity at fault for not having the wit and sensitivity to appreciate his art. Dies in quicksand watched by an ancient shepherd. 2 'Suck It Up Princess,' stars.
31/Jan/19: 22. The Nameless City: A cautionary tale about exploring ancient cities built by elder reptilian races, at night, by yourself, with naught but a guttering torch. You also shouldn't leave your camel by itself at the front door. Next time - bring a stout rope - whoops, no next time... 3 'Ill-Prepared,' stars.
30/Jan/19: 21. Ex Oblivione: Apparently drugs can unite you with the native infinity of crystal oblivion if that's what HPL discovered, I feel genuinely sorry for him. 4 'Illimitable Stars Living in the Sad Space Between Ecstasy and Desolation.'
29/Jan/19: 20. The Picture in the House: ... for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to the perfection of the hideous. Nothing like a bit of back woods New England cannibalism on a cold, wet, and windy night. 4 'Hungry,' stars.
29/Jan/19: 19. Nyarlathotep: After a slow start, becomes an evocative, spooky, and relevant tale about how whole societies can be unhinged by a charismatic interloper. 4 'Inconceivable,' stars.
29/Jan/19: 18. From Beyond: Could've inspired a dozen B-Grade movies. It's often better not to see what is normally Unseen. 4 'Chilling,' stars.
29/Jan/19: 17. Celephais: Authorial wish fulfillment? A stark reminder of the distinction between harsh and unyielding reality, and dreams born of drug addiction? Possibly, 3 'Uncertain,' stars.
29/Jan/19: 16. The Street: One 'Boring,' star. A disappointment after the previous story. You know - having at least one main character would be a good idea...
29/Jan/19: 15. Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family: Was the hilarious comedy of this work unintentional - I suspect so. Entertaining and gripping, I suspect this is HPL's best work to date. Some family secrets are best kept - well secret! 5 'Chuckling, Mesmerized,' stars.
27/Jan/19: 14. The Temple: Echoing Stoker's 'log of the Demeter,' and Alien's 'the Nostromo,' a u-boat crew undergoes death by a thousand eldritch cuts. 4 'Salty Cursed,' stars.
24/Jan/19: 13. The Cats of Ulthar: Reads like a fairy tale. Beware the vengeance of cats. 5 'Purring Stars of Contentment.'
24/Jan/19: 12. The Tree: I don't understand??? Not rated.
24/Jan/19: 11. The Terrible Old Man: No country for easy victims. 4 'Picking on the Wrong Guy,' stars.
24/Jan/19: 10. The Statement of Randolph Carter: Mucking about with eldritch forces in deserted graveyards will get you DEAD! - Effective writing. 4 'Scary,' stars.
24/Jan/19: 9. The Doom that came to Sarnath: Hubris begets Nemesis - but told with too many words... 2 'Endured,' stars.
24/Jan/19: 8. The White Ship: A sad tale of taking opportunity for granted. 3 'Sombre,' stars.
24/Jan/19: 7. The Transition of Juan Romero: An engaging story where what really happened remains a mystery. 4 'Eerie,' stars.
17/Jan/19: 6. Old Bugs: A real story in stark contrast to 'Memory,' - a cautionary tale against the demon drink. 4 'Down-and-Out,' stars.
17/Jan/19: 5. Memory: Forgettable and already forgotten - it might have been 1 star, who could say - what were we talking about again?
11/Jan/19: 4. Beyond the Wall of Sleep: 'Da da da ding ding ding...' goes the strumming banjo... Lovecraft obviously didn't like white-trash mountain folk a few decades before the movie 'Deliverance,' was produced. However, what happens when one of 'them,' starts seeing another world? Did Lovecraft invent the Tinfoil Hat? I think not - especially when a new star appears in the heavens to wreck vengeance upon a dreadful opponent. 3 'New Stars Resonating with Cosmic Mindwaves.'
11/Jan/19: 3. Polaris: Dreams, insanity, or visions? Guilt tied to a failed wish fulfillment for relevance for someone without relevance? A mercifully short tale of dreamy woe. 1 'Woeful,' star named Polaris...
09/Jan/19: 2. Dagon: Forgetfulness or death - great options?! As in 'The Call of Cthulhu,' something arises from an oceanic abyss as dark and deep as time itself. 3 'Slimy stars with a Twist at the End.'
09/Jan/19: 1. The Tomb: Jervas Dudley, dreamer, visionary, and confined within a refuge for the demented. Key lesson. If you lie down with the dead, you'll wake up with ghosts. Which in Jervas' case appears to have been an improvement. Of course, whenever ghosts are at work, the dim past is reaching forward with cold, dead hands to seize the present. 3 1/2 'Shivering Stars in a Moonless, Storm Wracked Night.' -
Disclosure: I picked up a free copy formatted for Nook on
CthulhuChick.com. You can pick up a Kindle copy at the same place.
Synopsis: The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft contains all the original stories which Lovecraft wrote as an adult. It begins in 1917 with “The Tomb” and ends in 1935 with his last original work “The Haunter of the Dark.” The book is ordered chronologically by the date the story was written. Because Lovecraft was a terrible businessman and left no heirs to his intellectual property, all of his works are already in the public domain. Collaborations or revisions are not included because some of those works may still be under the co-author’s copyright.
The book includes:
The Tomb (1917)
Dagon (1917)
Polaris (1918)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
Memory (1919)
Old Bugs (1919)
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919)
The White Ship (1919)
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919)
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)
The Terrible Old Man (1920)
The Tree (1920)
The Cats of Ulthar (1920)
The Temple (1920)
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920)
The Street (1920)
Celephaïs (1920)
From Beyond (1920)
Nyarlathotep (1920)
The Picture in the House (1920)
Ex Oblivione (1921)
The Nameless City (1921)
The Quest of Iranon (1921)
The Moon-Bog (1921)
The Outsider (1921)
The Other Gods (1921)
The Music of Erich Zann (1921)
Herbert West — Reanimator (1922)
Hypnos (1922)
What the Moon Brings (1922)
Azathoth (1922)
The Hound (1922)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Rats in the Walls (1923)
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923)
The Shunned House (1924)
The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
He (1925)
In the Vault (1925)
The Descendant (1926)
Cool Air (1926)
The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Pickman’s Model (1926)
The Silver Key (1926)
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927)
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
The Very Old Folk (1927)
The Thing in the Moonlight (1927)
The History of the Necronomicon (1927)
Ibid (1928)
The Dunwich Horror (1928)
The Whisperer in Darkness (1930)
At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)
The Dreams in the Witch House (1932)
The Thing on the Doorstep (1933)
The Evil Clergyman (1933)
The Book (1933)
The Shadow out of Time (1934)
The Haunter of the Dark (1935)
My Thoughts: What a long, strange journey it has been! While I could normally read a book this length in a few days, I actually spent almost 7 months reading this omnibus in bits and pieces. While I enjoyed the Lovecraftian lore I had heard, I had never really counted myself as a fan, per se; however, after having read the complete works of this amazing writer, I think I can honestly say that I am, indeed, a fan.
While it is true that Lovecraft was a racist, he was only aping the attitude of his time and place and history, and I think to judge him by modern standards is not useful when admiring his overall work. He was a man with a unique vision and voice, and that should be honored. He saw into vast and ancient places, and what he saw... well, it scared the crap out of him. But he kept looking, writing, and letting us know. I admire that.
If you enjoy modern bizarro works, then pay heed to the master. Lovecraft. -
Welp, I have done it; I have read ALL the Lovecraft. No, seriously, all of it – this collection is so literal about the “complete” part that it includes a prior draft of one of the novellas, several obscure stories that read suspiciously like slap-dash entries from a dream journal, and a few that I suspect were flat out just HP scribbling down some notes on worldbuilding.
Anyway. My goal was to finish this absolute tome within the month of October, and I managed it a week early because most of it is really very gripping. I had read some of Lovecraft’s more well-known stories a long time ago but there’s something to be said about the full-immersion experience. His worlds are so wild and weird and genuinely creepy, and a lot of them are interconnected, which enhanced the experience. There are so many stories in here that are effortlessly on par, and often superior to, a lot of modern horror. I was genuinely impressed.
That said, I can’t actually rate the book, and that’s because I can’t weigh “really excellent horror” against “really horrible racism” and arrive at a mathematically neat average of three stars, that… just doesn’t work. And we’re not talking a bit of olden-timey close-minded ignorance, here. The man went all in. He took pains to be racist. If an extra mile could be gone to fit in a bit more racism, he ran that mile, and then another ten. I lost count of how many cultures got the “ugly, stupid, repulsive, half-animal demonic devil worshippers” treatment, but there was a particular relish to those descriptions that made my skin crawl, and not in a nice, wholesome “unspeakable evil is coming to obliterate everything you love” way. It was just very pervasive, and very gross, and I don’t feel inclined to cut him any slack over it because of different times or whatever. It was the 20s/30s, and plenty of people managed to not be horrible racists.
The side effect of that was that Lovecraft’s protagonists were by default white Anglo-Saxon dudes, and the sausage fest got a little samey very quickly (as did the “scientists have disturbed primordial slumbering evil, oh no” formula). For a while I amused myself by genderbending and race-flipping at random, an exercise that was facilitated by the fact that quite a few of the stories are first person narrators, their maleness and whiteness assumed to be the default to such a degree that their gender and ethnicity weren’t often referred to, which made playing around with it easier. But then inevitably we’d fetch up against yet another wallowing description of repulsive, barely human non-whites who had the horrible bad manners to exist in the world, and all the mental gymnastics got a little shaky.
It was especially disorienting because this reread was inspired by the
Prosperity series, which I assume took some inspiration from Lovecraft and which I loved so much that I craved a little more Lovecraftian horror as a chaser. But coming from a raucously, joyously diverse fantasy that played around with Lovecraftian elements, to a world so grimly devoted to the demonisation of other cultures made for a bit of a jarring landing.
That doesn’t mean I regret the read and that I wasn’t genuinely absorbed. Lovecraft’s worlds remain unique, and it’s fascinating to see elements in his writing that presumably inspired later writers. The interconnectedness of his stories and the fictional New England settings reminded me a lot of Stephen King and how he interweaves his stories, while the tales set in a magical dreamscape brought Neil Gaiman and Sandman to mind.
My favourites were probably “The Colour Out of Space,” which was just really delightfully creepy; and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” an ongoing explosion of unique, imaginative, wonderful fantasy, and one of the few stories that had sympathetic monsters.
In short: The man invented a whole cosmos’ worth of otherworldly horror and that’s fantastic but it would’ve been nice if he could stretch that boundless imagination enough to entertain the notion that non-white cultures might in fact be human.
PS: Oh man, if I'd counted all these individually (a lot of them are novellas, plus an actual novel or two), I could've boosted my count by 65, lol. -
A little daunted by the prolific proclivities of Lovecraft, I decided to cherry pick. General consensus pointed out the following five tales as being the cream of the crop:
1. The Dragon
2. The Outsider
3. The Lurking Fear
4. The call of Cthulu
5. The Colour of outerspace
And, from my GR friend Bennet I picked up on ‘The thing on the doorstep’ which otherwise gets few mentions but turned out to be my favourite of the bunch. Then I stopped, because GR Chris told me too. And, because Lovecraft simply can’t be read in one sitting. Or, in summer. The similar tone of his stories, the atmosphere he creates can get samey if consumed in one glut. Pacing must surely be the key here. The rest to be revisited piecemeal, in darkest winter, with mulled wine and bundled under goose-down. Fire crackling in an open hearth optional . OK I only say this because burning real fires where I live is forbidden. Our fireplaces are now only elaborate conversation pieces. (which is an actual new compound word I learned last weekend at a National Trust Property and have been dying to plug into use somewhere). (Ok, I may have actually used it 100 times this week. People around me tell me to shut up, in order to protect the public). What the hell, whilst I’m at it, here is a conversational piece:
The idea is that if you’re an 18c toff having dinner at the Manor, this cornucopia would hang in front. As every body has done the Grand Tour , this painting is your opening conversation gambit with the partner to your left, whom you haven’t met before. Just for the record, this has nothing to do with Lovecraft. Although, he might have liked it: he seems fond of travel.
The stories, then: verbose, vague, and full of people losing their minds over indescribable horrors. My personal preference was for an actual description of the object of horror, which Lovecraft only indulges sporadically. But when he does, it was definitely edge of the seat stuff. The Lurking Fear and The thing on the Doorstep particularly stand out, despite bringing dated concepts to the table. Its to Lovecraft’s credit that he kept me bated even though I knew what was coming: the horror genre has come a long way since 1920. The call of Cthulu was overlong and tedious, can’t see why it keeps getting voted up on the charts.
To be savoured intermittently for full effect. -
Lovecraft was quite a strange and curious man. Likewise, his stories are a swirl of strangeness. He was able to beautifully blend the worlds of horror and science fiction to create his own world of otherworldly, cosmic horror. This is most evident in his Cthulhu Mythos. 'The Call of Cthulhu' is the beginning of this mythos and one of Lovecraft's most finely crafted stories. Wonderfully strange, terrifying, and powerful!
Another story of note is 'The Shunned House.' This story is based on a house in Providence, Rhode Island as well as one in Elizabeth, New Jersey which reminded him of the latter. He had written in a letter the following: "On the northeast corner of Bridge Street and Elizabeth Avenue is a terrible old house—a hellish place where night-black deeds must have been done in the early seventeen-hundreds—with a blackish unpainted surface, unnaturally steep roof, and an outside flight of stairs leading to the second story, suffocatingly embowered in a tangle of ivy so dense that one cannot but imagine it accursed or corpse-fed. It reminded me of the Babbit House in Benefit Street…. Later its image came up again with renewed vividness, finally causing me to write a new horror story with its scene in Providence and with the Babbit House as its basis."
One of my other favorites is 'The Dreams in the Witch's House.' Part of his Cthulhu Mythos, this is a story that explores Lovecraft's belief in cosmic indifference. -
A complete collection of H.P. Lovecraft's solo works (no collaborations), arranged by date. It's a huge work, no doubt.
My only gripe about the stories is that Lovecraft was overfond of a narrative style. If dialogue were water, I'd have died of thirst. And yet, the best of them read like a confession whispered through the cell door bars of an insane asylum.
One thing that surprised me was that Cthulhu was a prominent character in only one story… and from that has been built a massive edifice of fan fiction and the like.
Get this book. It's free, and it's an excellent reference work. -
Awestruck by Lovecraft's writing skills, and the breadth of his epic and horrific imagination.
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
-HP Lovecraft
The Alchemist: 5/5
At the Mountains of Madness: 5/5
Azathoth: 4/5
The beast in the Cave: 4/5
Beyond the wall of Sleep: 4/5
The Book: 5/5
The Call of Cthulu: 5/5
The Case of Alex Dexter Ward: 4/5
The Cats of Ulthar: 5/5
Celephais: 4/5
The Colour out of Space: 5/5
Cool Air: 3.5/5
Dagon: 5/5
The Descendent: 4/5
Discarded draft of the Shadow over Innsmouth: 4/5
The doom that came to Sarnath: 5/5
Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: 5/5
The Dreams in the Witch House: 3.5/5
The Dunwich Horror: 3.5/5
The Evil Clergyman: 3.5/5
Ex Oblivione: 5/5
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family: 3/5
The Festival: 3/5
From Beyond: 3.5/5
The Haunter of the Dark: 2.5/5
He: 2.5/5
Herbert West: Reanimator: 5/5
History of the Necronomicon: 3/5
Horror of Redhook: 2/5
The Hound: 3/5
Hypnos: 5/5
Ibid: 5/5
In the Vault: 3.5/5
The Little Glass Bottle: 4/5
The Lurking Fear: 4.5/5
Memory: 4/5
The Moon Bog: 3/5
The Music of Eric Zann: 3/5
The Mysterious Ship: 2/5
The Mystery of the Graveyard: 2/5
The Nameless City: 5/5
Nyarlathotep: 3/5
Old Bugs: 1/5
The Other Gods: 3/5
The Outsider: 4/5
Pickman's Model: 3.5/5
The Picture in the House: 3/5
Polaris: 3/5
The Quest of Iranon: 3.5/5
Rats in the walls: 4/5
The Reminiscence of Dr Samuel Johnson: 1/5
The Secret Cave: 2/5
The Shadow Out of Time: 4/5
The Shadow over Innsmouth: 5/5
The Shunned House: 5/5
The Silver Key: 4/5
The Statement of Randolph Carter: 3.5/5
Strange High House in the Mist: 3.5/5
The Street: 4/5
Sweet Ermengarde: 2/5
The Temple: 5/5
The Terrible Old Man: 3/5
The thing on the doorstep 4/5
Through the gates of the Silver Key: 5/5
The Tomb: 4/5
The Transition of Juan Romero: 3.5/5
The Tree: 4/5
Under the Pyramids: 3.5/5
The Unnameable: 4/5
The very old folk: 3.5/5
What the Moon Brings: 5/5
The Whisperer in Darkness : 5/5
The White Ship: 4/5
Bonus:
Later found these collaborations not included in the collection. I then found a collected version of most of these produced by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society: Collaborations. Highly recommend HPLHS's reading of these stories. (
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
The Tree On The Hill (collaboration DW Rimel): 5/5
The dream under the strange tree provides some glimpse into a terrorfying hidden dimension.
The Man of Stone (collaboration with Hazel Heald): 2/5
A stone statue scultper, who tries to steal the wife of an occultist who happens to know a formula for a drink that will turn a person to stone. Oh the irony.
Two Black Bottles (collaboration with WB Talman): 3/5
Is the uncle really dead or has he learned dark powers most unnatural.
The Thing in the Moonlight (collaboration with JC Miske): 3/5
Vivid story fragment, can imagine the palid colours and the dank swamp location.
Till A' the seas (collaboration with RH Barlow): 3/5
Thousands of years hence, mankind's death rattle as the planet becomes uninhabitable.
The Trap (collaboration with HS Whitehead): 3.5/5
What inhabits the dimension on the other side of the mirror. When Robert goes through, who comes back?
The Green Meadow (with WV Jackson): 3/5
A diary found inside a meteorite describes a man on a disintegrating island surrounded by evil who discovers a long forgotten city. Dream logic required.
The Night Ocean (with RH Barlow) : 3/5
Swimmers start disappearing at a beach, what hybrid children could be preying upon them?
The Mound (Ghostwritten from a simple prompt for Zealia Bishop): 4/5
The Mound avoided by the local native Mesoamericans is actually a gateway to a subterranean world where the old gods, their creations and offspring dwell. This is a full on novella.
The Electric Executioner (with Adolpho de Castro): 3.5/5
On a long train journey to Mexico the narrator meets a man who has an improved electrocution machine, the electric executioner, but when the narrator speaks some invocations of the old ones the stranger convulses and then disappears in a blast of blue light. When he arrives at his destination it appears that the man, Feldon has astrally projected himself somehow to the train, but now only his charred body is there, connected to his electric executioner. -
First of all, if I was rating the work that Ruth at cthulhuchick.com has done in compiling this collection, I'd give it a full 5 stars. She did an excellent job creating the e-book.
I had some very good memories of reading Lovecraft, and most of the stories still hold up well. What I could not get over though was the blatant racism. I realize that it was written in a different time, but it left me unable to fully appreciate the stories.
It was great to finally read the full Cthulhu mythos in order and to see it develop. It was interesting to read the originals that have influenced so many writers after.
All in all this book left me with mixed feelings. I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I'll ever read it again. -
**Review Under Construction**
******************************************************************************
November 1, 2015: Full disclosure, I don't really like Lovecraft. I love Poe, but Lovecraft did not impress me when I sampled him a few years ago. However, as with
The Turn of the Screw, I feel I should read Lovecraft just to catch all the allusions, especially since I have recently fallen in love with the work of a writer of the self-proclaimed New Weird (
Jeff VanderMeer), as it seems that would make Lovecraft the old weird. In any case, if I chip away at this I might be able to finish it relatively painlessly.
I know if I don't review stories as I go, I won't have any idea what to say once I'm finished, so here we go. (Update 2017: And now I have moved all my reviews to the individual works, which I will link back here, as I have hit the character limit trying to review it all in one place.)
★★☆☆☆ The Tomb (1917):
★★☆☆☆ Dagon (1917):
★★☆☆☆ Polaris (1918):
★☆☆☆☆ Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919):
★★☆☆☆ Memory (1919):
★☆☆☆☆ Old Bugs (1919):
★☆☆☆☆ The Transition of Juan Romero (1919):
★★★☆☆ The White Ship (1919):
★★★☆☆ The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919):
★★★☆☆ The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919):
★★★☆☆ The Terrible Old Man (1920):
★☆☆☆☆ The Tree (1920):
★☆☆☆☆ The Cats of Ulthar (1920):
★★★★☆ The Temple (1920):
★★☆☆☆ Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920):
★☆☆☆☆ The Street (1920):
★★★★★ Celephaïs (1920):
★★★★☆ From Beyond (1920):
★☆☆☆☆ Nyarlathotep (1920):
★★☆☆☆ The Picture in the House (1920):
★★☆☆☆ Ex Oblivione (1921):
★★☆☆☆ The Nameless City (1921):
★☆☆☆☆ The Quest of Iranon (1921):
★★☆☆☆ The Moon-Bog (1921):
★★★☆☆ The Outsider (1921):
★★☆☆☆ The Other Gods (1921):
★★☆☆☆ The Music of Erich Zann (1921):
(Hmmm. I've read almost half the works and only 15% of the book? I know the later stories are novellas, but sheesh.)
★★★☆☆ Herbert West — Reanimator (1922):
★★★☆☆ Hypnos (1922):
★★☆☆☆ What the Moon Brings (1922):
★★☆☆☆ Azathoth (1922):
★★★☆☆ The Hound (1922):
★★☆☆☆ The Lurking Fear (1922):
(Oh, hey, I've hit 20%. I was starting to think I was reading inside of some kind of space-time anomaly.)
★★☆☆☆ The Rats in the Walls (1923):
★★★☆☆ The Unnamable (1923):
★★☆☆☆ The Festival (1923):
★★★★☆ The Shunned House (1924):
(Folks, it actually took me a year to read the previous story. Kept falling asleep during the opening section. The rest was some kind of awesome, though.)
★☆☆☆☆ The Horror at Red Hook (1925):
★☆☆☆☆ He (1925):
★☆☆☆☆ In the Vault (1925):
(31%! I shouldn't complain after taking a year long break, but good grief!)
No rating. The Descendant (1926): Fragment; judging by the set up, I'm glad.
★★☆☆☆ Cool Air (1926):
★★☆☆☆ The Call of Cthulhu (1926):
★★☆☆☆ Pickman’s Model (1926):
★★★★☆ The Silver Key (1926):
(And now to figure out how to do the rest of this review since Goodreads thinks I shouldn't write a novel to review one.)
★★☆☆☆ The Strange High House in the Mist (1926):
★★☆☆☆ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927):
★★★★☆ The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927):
★★★☆☆ The Colour Out of Space (1927):
★☆☆☆☆ The Very Old Folk (1927):
★★★★☆ The Thing in the Moonlight (1927):
★★★★☆ The History of the Necronomicon (1927):
★★☆☆☆ Ibid (1928):
★★☆☆☆ The Dunwich Horror (1928):
★★★★☆ The Whisperer in Darkness (1930):
★★★★★ At the Mountains of Madness (1931): Quite suddenly Lovecraft redeems himself.
★★★☆☆ The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931): You've heard of this one, right? It's probably better than I'm giving it credit for. The previous story is a tough act to follow.
★★★★☆ The Dreams in the Witch House (1932): Witchcraft meets weird science. Loved.
★★★☆☆ The Thing on the Doorstep (1933): Loved everything but the sexism. (And no, I am not talking about the fact that sorcery types need male brains.)
★★★★☆ The Evil Clergyman (1933): A different kind of haunting. Loved.
★★★☆☆ The Book (1933): What I wanted a history of the Necronomicon to be. Why oh why couldn't he have finished this one?
And now (September 21, 2017) I am about to start his penultimate story. I'm almost sad. At the same time, freedom is so close!
★★★☆☆ The Shadow out of Time (1934): Sequel to At the Mountains of Madness but not as good.
★★★★★ The Haunter of the Dark (1935): His last is his best.
September 23, 2017: And now I'm finally done, and I really am sad. More thoughts to come.
Regarding the World Fantasy issue, since that came up while I was reading this collection:
Regarding racism (trigger warning for foul mouthed bigotry): -
read a decent selection of it :) pretty great!
Something being Euclidean or not is significantly less scary than he imagines haha -
Last year I read "Tales," the H.P. Lovecraft collection put together by the Library of America. That was my first exposure to Lovecraft and it was fantastic. It included most of his best known and longer works. I figured the stories they had excluded were probably the best of the best. Were they? Well, for the most part, yes. But there are some gems out there. With that being said, here's my review of the rest of Lovecraft's writing:
The Tomb: Lovecraft's first published work. A creepy tale of a man really, really, really wanting to get into a tomb. I read it as a strange metaphor for Lovecraft's sexual appetites.
Dagon: Great pre-cursor to "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Sailor in a life raft comes upon a strange, mysterious continent that has come up from unimaginable depths from an incalculable time. Fantastic setting of the mood and a cool ending.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep: The first of Lovecraft's sleep stories I've ever read. Basically a drunk bum has a secret dream life where he's waging an epic war against an interdimensional evil. Subtle and dark ending.
Old Bugs: Lovecraft was a notorious teetotaler and wrote this as a warning to his friends about the dangers of alcohol. Heavy-handed and ridiculous don't even begin to describe this one.
The Transition of Juan Romero: A mysterious native american working on a Southwest mine sees something he shouldn't (needs to?) see and pays the price.
The White Ship: Another dream story. A young lighthouse keeper goes on a White Ship (Hey, that's the name of the story!) and travels to many enchanted dream lands. Fairly silly. Maybe it's just because hearing about someone's dream is never, EVER, interesting.
The Doom That Came to Sarnath: Sarnath, a Rome-like empire, gets its comeuppance because of sins of its past. Some creepy parts, but the ending is hardly a twist with a story name like that. Still, some great visuals. Just imagining the bottomless lake next to the city with no water that comes in or goes out was fun to imagine. Another pre-cursor to "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."
The Terrible Old Man: The only crime story that I've ever read by Lovecraft. Short and sweet. Three no good thieves try to rob the titular character and meet a bad end. Come on guys, you knew he was terrible!
The Tree: Interesting story. Basically an extremely subtle version of "Amadeus." That's the great thing about a Lovecraft story, if somebody needs their just desserts, by Cthulhu, they get it!
The Cats of Ulthar: Lovecraft loved cats. This was a cautionary tale about what happened to a couple who liked to kill cats. Guess what happens to them?
The Temple: My absolute favorite of all the new stories I read in this collection. WWI German submarine runs afoul of some ancient Atlantean spirits. One of the only times I can remember the main character of a Lovecraft story not just being a thinly veiled version of himself. The main character is a stern German captain who is a one of a kind who will stick with me a long time.
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family: Ahh racism. It's been present in a lot of these stories. I didn't point it out because it usually isn't a huge distraction but in this case the whole point of the story depends on the reader being racist! Spoiler alert: Arthur finds out his ancestors are African...gorillas...and he doesn't take it well. This one made me cringe.
The Street: Even more racism. A street in New England seems many generations come and go. First, the strong, good, and moral colonists and then later dirty, foreign immigrants. The street eventually takes matters into its own hands to ethnically cleanse itself from the immigrants. I'd have been fine with this except the COLONISTS WERE IMMIGRANTS TOO! Make native american's the first people on the street and you'd have my attention.
Celephais: Main character (Lovecraft) escapes to the dream world and becomes their king! Yeesh, enough with the dreams.
From Beyond: A fantastic story! Mad scientist creates a machine that allows contact between other dimensions. Spoiler alert! It doesn't end well because he ignored Lovecraft's number one rule: Don't explore anything because you won't like what you find and what you find will freaking hate you!
Nyarlathotep: Weird Egyptian reenters modern society and proceeds to drive everyone that sees his "show" flipping insane. Lovecraft really imagined that the mind was a fragile thing. Everyone is always fainting or going insane from shock.
The Picture in the House: A real standout story. Researcher gets caught in the middle of no where in a storm and has to seek shelter in an ominous house. The images this one congers are breathtaking. The ending is as good as it gets.
The Nameless City: A precursor to "At the Mountains of Madness." The exploration of a cursed, ancient, deserted city. The narrator goes to lengths that boggle the mind. Really, you crawl through a tight, underground passage with no light, by yourself, on purpose?! You don't think maybe you should turn around?
The Quest of Iranon: Lovecraft's "you-can't-go-home-again" tale. Pretty good story. In this version, not only can't you go home, you were maybe never there in the first place.
The Moon-bog: This reminded me a little of "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell." Being enchanted isn't always a good thing. When you locals tell you not to drain a bog, don't drain it. I mean, who even thinks to try and drain a bog!?
The Other Gods: A classic man goes in search of the face of God story. I honestly didn't see the ending coming. Shocking mix of genre that Lovecraft would go on to use to great effect.
Hypnos: A story with super gay undertones (overtones?). After their meet cute, two hetero-lifemates go on a dream quest together and get burned when they get a little too cocky.
The Hound: Wonderful story. The two main characters are so bored with life that the only activity that brings them joy is grave robbing. They have an entire man cave full of treasure and corpses. These are the creepiest main characters in all of Lovecraft, and that's really saying something. Not only that, there's awesome werewolf/vampire action! This has something for the whole family!
The Unnamable: The most "meta" Lovecraft ever got. An author of horror stories sitting around debating the merits of horror while sitting on top of an ancient crypt at dusk. As funny as it is frightening!
The Festival: Weird as hell. Young man return to home town to go to a mysterious festival. I have no idea what was happening here.
In the Vault: Great short nugget of awesome! Drunk and lazy undertaker gets himself locked in a crypt with a bunch of folks who are dead...OR ARE THEY! Dun, Dun, Daaaaaaaaaaa! Cool twist ending to boot.
The Descendant: Super short start of what could ultimately be a cool story but just kind of peters out.
The Silver Key: Lovecraft's whining story about most people being too stupid and ethnic to understand true artists. Look, I get that you weren't appreciated in your day, but come on!
The Strange High House in the Mist: This as a great visual: An ancient house on a high cliff that no one can get two that only has one door that opens to a sheer cliff drop off that is frequently covered in a thick mist. Unfortunately, the rest of the story doesn't deliver on this intriguing setting.
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: The worst Lovecraft I've ever read. Super long boring dream-quest. Literally this guys dream. It's got everything: Racism, moon cats, devils, racism, misconceptions of basic science, and racism. Go ahead and skip this one.
The Very Old Folk: The very poorly written and boring story.
The Evil Clergyman: Cursed time-loop! CURSED TIME LOOP!
The Book: Spoiler: It's the Necronomicon. There, I saved you 3 minutes.
I love Lovecraft, but after reading all these I can't rate his complete works move than 3 stars. He has so many 5 star stories but way too many that I'd put at 1 star or less. My advice, seek out the best Lovecraft and read the rest only if you're a completist. I am now obsessed with him so I had no choice and enjoyed the hell out of it, but wouldn't recommend this massive undertaking to the casual reader. My recommendations:
Dagon, The Temple, From Beyond, The Picture in the House, The Other Gods, The Hound, The Outsider, The Music of Erich Zann, Herbert West - Reanimator, The Lurking Fear, The Rats in the Walls, The Call of Cthulhu, Pickman's Model, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Color Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror (my favorite), The Whisperer in Darkness, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth (a close 2nd), The Dreams in the Witch House, The Haunter of the Dark.
Pick any of these, but leave the lights on. You have been warned. -
What can be said about the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft? A author who could be frustrating, fascinating, purple in his prose, and amazing in his imagination. An author who manages to stand out in both offensive attitudes about race for his time and yet also imagines alien otherworldly kingdoms that remind us how insignificant human prejudices may be.
As the author of CTHULHU ARMAGEDDON and a fan of countless pastiches of his work like TITUS CROW, ANDREW DORAN, THE INNSMOUTH LEGACY, HARRY STUBBS, and more--I owe HPL a lot. He helped change the cultural landscape of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by combining all three effortlessly. Some of his works are absolutely fantastic and others, well, I'll be honest, aren't great. No one bats a 1000.
What are his best works?
THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE - Probably his best work and one of the all time greatest horror stories of all time. It's just such a crazy premise: an evil color. However, it's also weirdly accurate to the future as the discovery of radiation and colors just within the perception of the eye are amazing.
THE DUNWICH HORROR - A parody of the Book of Revelations that also works as a pure "evil cult" and Antichrist story.
THE WHISPERER IN THE DARKNESS - An encounter with body-stealing aliens that never gets old.
THE CALL OF CTHULHU - Honestly, not one of my favorites but it gets props here for just being so damned influential. Not only did it create the Big C but it also formulated a lot of the ideas behind the mythos into a coherent mythology.
COOL AIR - Well before vampires made it passe, a man laments the horrible price he's paid for immortality.
THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD - Not a very Lovecraftian story and I almost don't list it here but it's a solid piece of urban fantasy before the idea came out. There's an evil wizard at work and what has done with Charles Ward (or IS he Charles Ward?)
THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH - His most famous and most frequently adapted work for a reason. Yes, it's racist as frick but it's hidden racism versus, well, the Horror at Red Hook.
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS - An Antarctic expedition that formed the basis of PROMETHEUS but don't hold that against it.
THE SILVER KEY and THE DREAMQUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH - Two very strange stories that form the wonderful twisted high fantasy tale of Randolph Carter. It's also the basis for a lot of Stephen King's The Dark Tower.
His scariest?
THE UNNAMEABLE, THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP, and PICKMAN'S MODEL are just wonderful twist stories. Of the the three, I give Thing the most props because the discovery your spouse is not who you think they are is a very good "primal fear."
THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER also is one I love for its ending even if it definitely requires the protagonists to have poked the bear a few more times than a properly sane occultist should.
THE RATS IN THE WALLS also makes use of that wonderful question of, "What the hell is that noise?"
His worst?
THE HORROR AT RED HOOK - which doesn't feel Lovecraftian or all that scary. It also has all of the racism and is basically just a 20 page screed by a dirty cop about how he hates rich guys who hang around brown folk as well as host parties in their basement.
HERBERT WEST - REANIMATOR - HPL agrees with me here. He did not like this work. I actually give this story props as it helped invent the cannibal zombie trope. The thing is that a lot of it is repetitive and consists of, "the protagonists resurrect some poor bastard then it goes berserk." The complete lack of character development or twists kind of hurt it even if I give props to the final fate of our enemy. I feel like the lurid B-movie really improved on the original serial.
Basically, you should read all of HPL's work if you have the time.
9.5/10 -
I've been working on reading through these short stories and novellas for the past 9 months, taking my time with them and making sure I didn't rush through them too quickly. I also didn't want to get burned out on them. There are a total of 63 works in this complete collection, presented in the order in which they were written (not necessarily the same as the order of publication). There are no collaborations here, just the total body of work that HP Lovecraft produced on his own.
As with any collection of so many stories, their quality ran the gamut from merely OK to masterpiece. It was very interesting to read them in order; I could see how he developed as a writer and I could also better understand how the Cthulho mythos evolved and expanded. There is, of course, no doubt about the great impact this author has had on horror fiction specifically, and the larger speculative fiction genres in general. That alone would grant this collection 5 stars. I granted 4 stars due to my overall enjoyment of the collection. The vast majority of the author's work reflects his preferred narrative style and I think only one or two stories here contain any substantial dialogue. For me that cut down on the enjoyability factor quite a bit but I do recognize the era in which these were written.
My favorites include: The Tomb, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Rats in the Walls, The Call of Cthulu, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time.
A note on the e-book itself: first of all...it's free! It's also put together very well, with a linked-in table of contents which allows you to jump directly to any story. And at the end of each story there is another link back to the TOC. That certainly makes it easy to navigate. The formatting is spot-on and, unlike many e-books I read, I didn't find a single misspelled word. I also appreciated the TOC listing the date each story was written, to assist in understanding what was going on in the author's life at that time. In fact before I read each story, I looked up the Wikipedia entry for it so as to absorb what sort of demons Lovecraft was fighting at the time, what likely influenced the story, and where and when it was ultimately published. It's also fun to see all the popular references in today's culture that reflect characters, places, etc. from Lovecraft's works.
A long but worthwhile journey. -
I am rating this as an entire book, rather than an opinion of the author in general or of any given stories. And that may be the main problem I had with this book, or the main problem I have as a reader. When I get a book, I like to read it cover to cover. I don't like to quit books that I've started. So I read every story. If you don't have my compulsions, this would be a good reference book to HP Lovecraft. As a complete collection, one quickly discovers that Lovecraft is quite repetitive, both with story ideas and favorite words. He really loves phosphorescence. And inbred, mutated New Englanders. It's my opinion that 96.8% of readers would be better off getting an edited collection of maybe 10 of Lovecraft's best stories and realizing that the rest are more of the same.
-
Best ebook version of Lovecraft with contents linked such that you can easily hop to the story you need. Other Lovecraft compilations on Amazon (at the time I bought this) don't have that linked contents, and you don't want to have to page through an entire book of this size just to get to one story.
Also worth the purchase because it was given away free (and you can still find it) - but I'd urge you to kick some money over to the woman who did the formatting (CthulhuChick), it's worth it.
As for the stories themselves? Possibly an acquired taste. Some are much better than others, and Lovecraft does have certain tropes he uses again and again - narrator faints when the horror appears (it's just too horrific!), something is indescribable (usually a horror), and words like eldritch and non-euclidian appear repeatedly, etc. But there's something fun and occasionally creepy in Lovecraft's stories that really is charming, and I often enjoy his over the top descriptions and bizarre scenes.
Not so much enjoyment for the racism and xenophobia - which I never shy away from warning people does pop up in Lovecraft and which I really hate. I can't say he's the only author from his time period that has this dis-likable trait, and I'm of two minds about it. I'd rather avoid authors like this - yet at the same time, the words are there, and he's not the only one spewing this sort of thing - and I think we're better off not forgetting that this sort of writing was common. (I can't say that Lovecraft is the most disturbingly casually racist content I've read, but that certainly doesn't excuse it.) I don't think it's the kind of thing we should forget, and it should be held up as an example of what we don't want to go back to.
Another author with racism that I found disturbing:
G. K. Chesterton, in one of his Father Brown stories.
[I went into a longer discussion of race and Lovecraft
here, when I was trying to explain why some people are attracted to Lovecraft in spite of these issues, and why it's problematic to toss out literature with these issues. Short version: there's a lot of lit with this issue.] -
It's hard to rate any writer's collection of prose since rounding up an average number would seem too harsh on the high points of the author’s career and too undeserving for her weaker works, a fact which is also true concerning the complete works of Lovecraft. Though not all of Lovecraft's stories felt fresh and although I found some of his stories drastically less interesting than others, his masterful approach to arrange all his work to form a single mythos and the way with every new story you were given more clues and insights to see the bigger picture, was what made reading the whole collection entertaining.
And about the racism... I have to say all the remarks and criticisms I’ve heard about Lovecraft’s racism before reading "The Rats in the Walls", “The Horror at Red Hook" and "The Call of Cthulhu", could not have prepared me for the nonchalant, hate-filled way he addressed his nonwhite characters. -
I'll spoil my impressions of this book with two phrases, which will surely make some Lovecraft fans really angry:
1. Lovecraft loved to write, but not tell stories.
2. Lovecraft got paid by the word, and he really liked the money.
But before you come with pitchforks and torches to get me, let me explain the whole affair.
First off, the first story of the book is "At the Mountains of Madness" (because all stories are in their alphabetical order) and it really rubbed me in the wrong way: It does a good job setting the ambient for the story but when it reaches its crux, it starts to dragging down and the story pace goes really really slow, because at this point, Lovecraft decides that almost all -- if not all -- substantives must have a proper adjective. This doesn't help the pace at all. It's like a murder scene, when the murderer appears behind the poor girl and slowly walks towards her, except he's on the other side of the house and the whole thing is in slow motion. At the end, you start to hope that the murderer runs and kills the girl already, because the suspense is already over and the thing is already dragging itself out.
"But that's just ONE story!" you may cry. I agree with you in that, except the pattern appears everywhere. "Nameless sound", "sinister with latent horror", "clock's abnormal ticking". It goes on and on and on, apparently trying to scare you with adjectives instead of the story itself. There are so many of those dragging the pace down that I felt asleep more than once reading the book. Yes, you read it right: A book about horror stories put me to sleep. Also, it was the first time in my whole life that I got tired of reading; no, I didn't got mentally exhausted, I didn't get physically tired; I got tired of reading. It was the opposite of what I felt when I finished reading "Lord of the Rings": When the story ended, I wanted to read more; with Lovecraft, I wanted to read less.
Also, in general, Lovecraft managed to create his own little universe where his stories float around. Most authors would get this universe and expand it further and further, but Lovecraft manages to make the incredible feature of never expanding the universe, to the point that more stories actually diminish the universe instead of expanding it.
Not only the stories are not superb, but the editing leaves a lot to be desired. There are two or three stories written by Lovecraft in his childhood/early teens, which seem to be added to tell that Lovecraft loved to write since the early ages, but they are put without any editing or even grammatical checking, which does more harm to the author than help him.
Not that all stories are bad, some are good. But they are drowned in the world of stories that go nowhere that they are the exception instead of the rule.
In the end, you can think of this: You have heard about "Necronomicon", you probably heard about "Cthulu", you may have heard about the "Old Ones" -- and that's probably it. Of about 2000 pages of stories and a lot more words, only 4 got beyond Lovecraft stories. -
In one word: amazing.
It took me over a year to make my way through all the stories, but in the end, I feel it was worth it. Lovecraft is a difficult writer to get into. His early work is honestly subpar although there are flashes of brilliance ("Dagon" comes to mind). The later stories are absolutely mindblowing, especially the Mythos stories.
What I loved most about Lovecraft is his boundless imagination. Very few writers have been able to depict aliens as something truly alien. His conception of alien life is very dissimilar from humanity. The aliens in his stories don't share the same plane of reality, they don't adhere to our aesthetics, and they think in a vastly different way which we can't fathom.
His idea of space travel is also very interesting. He melds mysticism with science in a way I've seen no other writer do till now. More importantly, his idea of cosmic horror is something that truly shakes a person down to the core. The view that we, as humanity, are nothing but insignificant ants in the vastness of cosmos is truly horrifying. There's also the fact that some of the alien races are so advanced in terms of evolution that they are now godlike to us (Cthulhu comes to mind).
I have a lot more to say about Lovecraft, but I'll leave you with this highly relevant quote by him that concisely conveys the argument of his work:
“The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” -
The complete works of a master at the price of 99 cents. A steal at ten times the price.
Seriously, if you have a Kindle, get this. It's formatted near perfectly for an insane amount of content, and the stories are arranged by date so you get the entire feel of Lovecraft's work. There's a lot of repetition if you try and read the entire thing, but you can trace the development of the Mythos, and appreciate all the self-referencing each of his works has. If you've just read Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, you soon realize that Randolph Carter and Kadath itself are woven into and influenced by many other stories. The Pickman line, too. You can even catch the little nods to Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany,and Robert Chambers, which make the Mythos a bit more meta than you'd think.
You also can get a full idea of his themes. The fear of degenerating into something subhuman, of isolation causing degeneration, and science being powerless: these recur a lot. The supernatural is not something you tamper with at all.
But even if you don't plan on reading it all, you get all of Lovecraft's famous works in one handy package at a criminally low price. Lovecraft ages well, too: he's quite readable even now. Buy this, put it on your Kindle, turn the lights down low and pop in the Silent Hill soundtrack. Try not to be afraid. -
La tomba: 4/5
Dagon: 4/5
La stella Polare: 4/5
Oltre il muro del sonno: 4/5
Memoria: 3/5
Ex-Barone: 4/5
La scomparsa di Juan Romero: 4/5
La nave Bianca: 4/5
La rovina di Sarnath: 4/5
La dichiarazione di Randolph Carter: 4/5
Il terribile Vecchio: 4/5
L'albero: 3/5
I gatti di Ulthar: 4/5
Il tempio. Manoscritto trovato sulla costa dello Yucatan: 4/5
La verità sul defunto Arthur Jermyn e la sua famiglia: 3/5
La strada: 2/5
Celephais: 2/5
Dall'altrove: 4/5 -
I was prepared for the creepiness of his stories, but not the unexpectedly gorgeous prose. That said, you've got to knock AT LEAST one star off for unbridled racism.
Some favorites:
The Quest of Iranon
The Music of Erich Zann
The Silver Key
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward -
A classic! All of Lovecraft's fiction in one place and in chronological order.
His works are wonderfully creepy and redolent with science and folklore. What makes them even more creepy is the realism he places in them. Just enough for you to wonder "what if?". I just love this stuff. -
Grazie Lovecraft per avermi accompagnato per tutta questa calda estate.
Giudicare questo libro è difficile perchè significa giudicare l'intera opera Lovecraftiana e anche se il libro non vale cinque stelle ho deciso comunque di dargliele poichè uno scrittore grandissimo come il sopra citato le vale tutte.
1635 pagine spalmate su tre lunghissimi mesi(interrotti dalle vacanze) sono troppo immense per arrivare alla conclusione che il libro non mi è piaciuto,sarei stupido,come lo sarebbe anche esaltarlo a capolavoro cercando di evitare certe sue pecche.
Partiamo da consigli pratici e premesse così me le levo per dovere di cronaca:
Non mi sarei mai avventurato nella lettura di questo mattone se non avessi già letto l'equivalente di due dei quattro libri della Mondadori qui racchiusi (soprattutto dei racconti Lovcraftiani puri) e anche questo non è bastato a finirlo completamente non avendo letto una decina dei suoi racconti scritti in collaborazione.
L'avvertenza principale su questo libro è di non portarlo in viaggio!Da lasciarlo in casa e leggerlo nelle afose e ombrose notti estive quando si ha voglia di buttarsi nel vero orrore.
Passando ai racconti ce ne è davvero di cose da dire!Ridurrò il papiro dicendo che questi li ho divisi in due tipi:quelli orrorifici e inquietanti ( il modello di Pickman,la maschera di Innsmouth,la casa delle streghe,Nyarlathotep,la musica di Erich Zann) e quelli dove la fantascienza e il miticismo prendono il sopravvento stroncando l'orrore e dando spazio agli abissi del tempo e dello spazio (Colui che sussurrava nelle tenebre,il colore venuto dallo spazio,la casa sfuggita) oltre ai vari racconti onirici che erano molto cari a Lovecraft ma secondo me,tranne pochi,non abbastanza meritevoli a causa della loro confusione.
A parte 3-4 tutti i racconti mi sono piaciuti ma i capolavori veri secondo me sono gli scritti orrorifici e inquetanti che dimostrano la bravura di Lovecraft nella narrazione e nella capacità di creare il climax mentre in quelli più fantascientifici,che di base non sono proprio il mio pane, ce ne sono alcuni veramente meritevoli ma molti (soprattutto i più lunghi come "Le montagne della follia") sono veramente pesanti per il carico di descrizioni esagerato e a tratti incomprensibile dato che tendono a sfinire il lettore non dandogli nemmeno la possibilità di sforzarsi per capirle.
Ma certi racconti sono proprio dei capolavori!Colpi di genio da maestro che ti tengono bloccato davanti alle pagine e ti fanno applaudire quando l'effetto di orrore è passato,incredibile.
Ho scoperto scritti notevoli che avevo subito creduto secondari come: La nave bianca,la dichiarazione di Randolph Carter,la città senza nome,il prete malvagio e altri due che solo per la lunghezza avevo scartato e invece sono stati entrambi i più grandi racconti del libro ovvero "Il caso di Charles Dexter Ward" e "La casa delle streghe".
Grazie a questo libro ho passato delle sere estive indimenticabili e mi sono davvero immedesimato in Lovecraft cercando di spiegarmi le sue scelte narrative per poi rileggere i racconti e cercare finali alternativi ( cosa che facevo anche prima ma meno attentamente).
E' stato spettacolare,penso che momenti del genere li vivrò ancora poche volte con in mano un libro e mi dispiace tantissimo pensare che quel periodo sia finito. -
I read the half of the stories, mesmerized by Lovecraft's style and atmosphere but I need to have a break and get away from this eeriness for a while. When it comes to Lovecraft, everyone mentions 'the Call of Ktulu' but there is more to it although I felt reading the same creepy adventures of the same character from different times for most of the stories.
One thing that bugs me and makes me have mixed feelings is his racist approach to non-Europeans. Most foreigners are malicious and unreliable. Hell no, thanks. I need less typical strangers that protagonists have to face. -
Lovecraft, as always, comes with a gigantic disclaimer. The racism, the misogyny, or just plain malice of Lovecraft are sometimes hard to deal with, and probably enough to make many people put down his stories (including me, more than a few times) but at the same time, they are a really good read. Especially in the genre. Lovecraft was an a******, but he was also a pretty decent writer of the weird tales. Or something.
-
Nei primi anni '90 comprai e lessi gli Oscar, con cui la Mondadori, per la prima volta in Italia, allora raccolse l'intera produzione di Lovecraft. Questa nuova edizione è ancora più curata, sia nella traduzione sia nel corredo critico che introduce i racconto, sempre mantenendo la loro disposizione per ordine cronologico. In più è in formato Kindle. Quindi a distanza di 25 anni, si crea di nuovo l'occasione per un'immersione totale nelle atmosfere folli dello scrittore di Providence.
-
I wound up not reading every novel and short story in the anthology, they grew very repetitive and I couldn't get past the unabashed racism that kept popping up (even though I knew to expect it). These stories are foundational to a genre, which was my motivation in reading them, but I can see why some of the characters and themes have been more influential and persistent rather than the specific stories themselves.
-
I can't finish one of his stories. I'm guessing something's wrong with me since he's considered a classic horror writer, but man his stuff is boring, voiceless and not even that weird. How am I supposed to care? Everything's written with a distance, not only from the action, but from the characters involved. Arg.
-
I finished this a few days ago and feel like it deserves some words. Some minor spoilers are possible!
Just to get it out of the way, yes, Lovecraft has more than a few moments of awful racism, and his female characters are pretty much non-existent. There's not much excuse for this; Lovecraft's personal racism and sexism are well-documented. It's really an unfortunate intrusion of a retrograde authorial perspective. I try to get past it by just thinking of it as part of the narrators' biases; they all tend to be jerks anyway.
We could also talk a lot about Lovecraft's failings as a writer, but I don't want to dwell so much on that; I prefer to discuss the pros and cons of individual stories, what works and what doesn't within the conceits Lovecraft sets up within and between narratives. Suffice it to say that HPL's style is dated and idiosyncratic and quite unlike anything else I've ever read, even while I can see his fingerprints on much of the horror that comes after.
Overall, this collection was a success in what I was looking for: creepy, bizarre, macabre tales to undergird my enjoyment of the Halloween season. Make no mistake that Lovecraft deserves his place in the firmament as master of the ‘weird fiction’ subgenre, and that his obvious world view of a cosmos devoid of empathy for paltry human life is not only frightening, but also deeply philosophically unsettling. For me, anyway. I may make a tradition of reading a few of these, Lovecraft's longer works, each October...
For now, a few words about some of longer works in this collection, including those I liked and those I very much did not like.
The Call of Cthulhu
There’s a reason why this is Lovecraft’s best remembered, best loved tale, and why it has spawned Cults of Cthulhu who actually worship at the alter of the jiggly, octopoid horror. This is a triumph of the building of a certain ineffable atmosphere of dread and uneasiness. This is also the best of Lovecraft’s stories with a global reach, encompassing subplots (if you want to call them that) that stretch from New England to the Bayou to the South Pacific and beyond. I think it would make an awesome movie, tracing the narrator as his investigations reveal layers of cultish activity and previous clueless inquiries, piecing them together as each new narrative introduces interesting characters and scenarios to the screen, the timeline doubling back upon itself as new details of Cthulhu’s awakening arise… I also love this story for its crystallization of what I see as an overlooked theme in Lovecraft’s work, that of the differences between the poetic and the scientific mind. In HPL’s stories, the hero is often a rational, sober, scientific man who has difficulty believing, at first, in the strange circumstances around him—while the poetic or artistic minds, often those of young, ‘antiquarian’ men, are not only quick to grasp the situation, but often act as a conduit for the horrors of the past, the cosmos, or both.
Also, Cthulhu is horrific, as is the dirge, “In his house at R’lyeh, Cthulhu waits dreaming.” What in the squamous name of indescribable horrors could a thing like that be dreaming…?
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
This seems to be a popular work, and while I can’t deny its rollicking, fun quality, I ultimately found it to be one of the less enjoyable pieces in the collection. For one thing, it’s interminable. For another, while it is cool that it weaves together a lot of the lore and creature-features of previous stories—from within the Dream mythos and beyond—Lovecraft ends up diluting them through over-exposure. This story falls shortly after “Pickman’s Model,” in which we are introduced to dreamworld ghouls as an unmitigated horror—but here we find them to be ugly but virtuous allies, having accepted Pickman as one of them, and with the narrator occasionally “shuddering in dismay at their horrible visages” or some such, as if to remind readers that these are meant to be avatars of supreme menace with whom circumstance has forced an alliance, not loyal and endearing lapdogs. Don’t get me started on the night-ghasts. Thus is the trouble with over-exposure. Skip this entry if you’d rather Lovecraft’s creepers stay creepy, my friend.
Herbert West: Re-Animator
On the other end of the spectrum, here’s a story that is considered to be Lovecraft’s worst, but which I enjoyed immensely. Certainly the constraints of the publisher show through, with each chapter, having been published serially, commencing with a recap of the story so far. It’s clunky. The story itself can be accurately described as a bit of workmanlike Frankensteinia. But it’s so much fun, everyone, because the action is legitimately freaky, frightening, and ghastly. West’s passionless obsession with restoring mechanical life—more than implying his sense of the essential mechanistic, soulless nature even of natural life—is chilling in its frankness. The prospect of a reanimated experiment escaping captivity and haunting the night is bone-chattering. And the fact that almost each chapter ends with another ghoul potentially joining the ranks of the near-mindless, undead and angry will have you looking over your shoulder. In retrospect I can see the marks of satire in this piece, the last refuge of a writer churning out crap for a paycheck when he’d rather be doing something a little more serious. I may be in the minority, but I think this story is serious enough. (How it stacks up to the cult classic movie adaptation, I have no idea. Too scary.)
At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time
Lovecraft’s stories suffer when they get too far away from the ghoulish little world he so potently curated in benighted Arkham, Mass. These two stories, though among his most celebrated, are in that category. Throughout the ill-advised explorations of antarctic plateaux and immemorially-lost alien underworlds of “Madness,” I found myself longing for the ordorous, gambrel-roofed, Necronomicon-dotted districts of New England. Same for “Shadow,” which seemed a Xerox of its predecessor, its action shifted slightly to the Australian outback. Interesting concepts in both—particularly the latter’s depiction of, er, huge cone-shaped time-traveling aliens meddling with human minds—and some genuine scares. Just a little too ponderous for me, and not enough Arkham-n-environs.
The Horror at Red Hook
HPL lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn for a time during his marriage. If you want to see his xenophobia and racism condensed into a single story of alien cults and child-killing and maybe get some sort of catharsis out of it, here’s your tale. I find Lovecraft’s feelings bizarre and inexcusable, but I prefer to think of them as the result of a singularly sensitive mind coming into contact with a century it wasn’t prepared for, and creating an allegory of outsiders to try and cope with it. Helps it all go down a bit easier.
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Many of HPL’s stories involve the gibber-inducing cosmic menace of such humanity-ignoring entities as Azathoth, the blind Idiot-God, or the mysterious and ineffable Nyarlathotep, or the aforementioned screeching, outsized madness of Cthulhu, or various subordinate alien races in a variety of evolutionarily questionable body-shapes. But other times the threats are less remote, and intertwined with the history of an America that strikes a lot closer to home. Such is the case of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, in which one of those antiquarian characters I mentioned comes under the influence of a lingering, malevolent spirit out of early US history, providing a creepy and interesting meditation on the sins of the forefathers being visited on the sensitive, poetic, and innocently unsuspecting succeeding generations. Thank goodness there are those sober scientific types to recognize what’s going on, after a suitable reign of terror has been allowed to descend. The moral: don’t take creepy paintings of your ancestors home with you, and for Azathoth’s sake, don’t let your kid go off on European excursions alone!
The Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, The Whisperer in Darkness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth
These four stories form a nice core of New England-based monster mysteries that stand as well on their own as well as they connect to each other and the larger Cthulhu mythos. I don’t want to say to much about them, but they all have my highest recommendation. There’s a distinct Body Snatcher/War of the Worlds vibe insofar as they feature essentially normal, salt of the earth folks contending with menaces beyond their reasonable experience. (Also, fish-people.) There are a few shorter stories that fit well with these four, but I’ll leave it to the brave reader to discover them!
In closing, I’d just like to recommend that anyone with an interest in the macabre give Lovecraft a chance, even if you find yourself somewhat slow to warm to him. Set his prejudices aside, if you can, and if not, think of them as fascinating social eccentricities of a strange, harmless man. Settle in to the fact that you’ll usually be able to tell where his stories are going within the first few pages. The fun is in taking the journey with the clueless narrators, and wandering through a moody world of Cyclopean terrors, and letting Lovecraft shew you the accursed, unnameable delights of indescribably antedeluvian, decadently fungous madness! -
Novellas
At the Mountains of Madness 5⭐
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward 5⭐
The Colour Out of Space 5⭐
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath 5⭐
The Dreams in the Witch House 5⭐
The Dunwich Horror 5⭐
Herbert West — Reanimator 5⭐
The Horror at Red Hook 4⭐
The Shadow out of Time 5⭐
The Shadow Over Innsmouth 5⭐
The Shunned House 5⭐
The Whisperer in Darkness 4.5⭐
Short Stories
The Alchemist 4⭐
Azathoth 3.5⭐
The Beast in the Cave 4⭐
Beyond the Wall of Sleep 5⭐
The Book 4⭐
The Call of Cthulhu 5⭐
The Cats of Ulthar 4⭐
Celephaïs 4⭐
Cool Air 4⭐
Dagon 5⭐
The Descendant 3⭐
The Doom That Came to Sarnath 4⭐
The Evil Clergyman 3.5⭐
Ex Oblivione 4⭐
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family 4⭐
The Festival 3.5⭐
From Beyond 4.25⭐
The Haunter of the Dark 5⭐
He 4.25⭐
The History of the Necronomicon 4⭐
The Hound 5⭐
Hypnos 3.75⭐
Ibid 3⭐
In the Vault 4⭐
The Little Glass Bottle 2⭐
The Lurking Fear 5⭐
Memory 4⭐
The Moon-Bog 4⭐
The Music of Erich Zann 4⭐
The Mysterious Ship 2⭐
The Mystery of the Grave-Yard 2⭐
The Nameless City 4.5⭐
Nyarlathotep 3⭐
Old Bugs 3.5⭐
The Other Gods 3⭐
The Outsider 4⭐
Pickman's Model 5⭐
The Picture in the House 5⭐
Polaris 3.5⭐
The Quest of Iranon 4⭐
The Rats in the Walls 5⭐
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson 2⭐
The Secret Cave 2⭐
The Silver Key 4⭐
The Statement of Randolph Carter 4.5⭐
The Strange High House in the Mist 5⭐
The Street 4⭐
Sweet Ermengarde 3⭐
The Temple 4.5⭐
The Terrible Old Man 4⭐
The Thing on the Doorstep 5⭐
The Tomb 5⭐
The Transition of Juan Romero 4.25⭐
The Tree 4⭐
The Unnamable 3⭐
The Very Old Folk 3⭐
What the Moon Brings 4⭐
The White Ship 3.5⭐
Collaborations and Rare Stories
The Battle That Ended the Century 2⭐
The Challenge from Beyond 3.5⭐
Collapsing Cosmoses 2.5⭐
The Crawling Chaos 4⭐
The Curse of Yig 5⭐
The Diary of Alonzo Typer 5⭐
The Disinterment 5⭐
The Electric Executioner 4⭐
The Green Meadow 2.5⭐
The Hoard of the Wizard Beast 3⭐
The Horror at Martin's Beach 4⭐
The Horror in the Burying-Ground 3.5⭐
The Horror in the Museum 4⭐
In the Walls of Eryx 4.25⭐
The Last Test 3⭐
The Man of Stone 3.5⭐
Medusa’s Coil 5⭐
The Mound 5⭐
The Night Ocean 2⭐
Out of the Aeons 4⭐
Poetry and the Gods 2⭐
The Slaying of the Monster 1⭐
The Thing in the Moonlight 3.5⭐
Through the Gates of the Silver Key 3.5⭐
“Till A’ the Seas” 3.5⭐
The Trap 4⭐
The Tree on the Hill 4⭐
Two Black Bottles 3.5⭐
Under the Pyramids 4⭐
Winged Death 5⭐
