Getting into Lovecraft

I realized that I all I know about Lovecraft is from Pop-Cultural Osmosis. I want to change that.

Where's a good starting point?

For Lovecraft's work, any collection of his short stories should suffice—my personal favorite story is "The Colour Out of Space", but "Cool Air" is also nicely spooky. Any decent library should have at least one volume of his stuff or be able to interlibrary loan it for you.

For the Chthulu Mythos, you might actually prefer later authors—Mr. Lovecraft's writing style can be an obstacle for the casual reader.

edited 24th Apr '12 12:51:33 PM by SKJAM

I "started" on Lovecraft by purchasing his ENTIRE anthology on my nook for .99$ It came of started with At the Mountains of Madness and then moved into The Colour out of Space, The Curious Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and then gets into the mythos. Its a pretty good set up.

I bought B&N's physcial version of his anthology (H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction) for $20 months before I bought my nook! I should have waited. :/

At ninety-nine cents, you might as well purchase the entire fiction output of HPL, yes.

At the Mountains of Madness is essentially a history of all the Lovecraft world with the origins of a whole bunch of his alien races explained. It's pretty good. Pickman's Model is a good story.

There's no real internal chronology, and most of them are short (with the exception of his novels, At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward... did I miss anything?), so you can really read them in any order.

The first ones I read were "The Festival", "The Color Out of Space", and "The Call of Cthulhu", in that order. It made as good an introduction as any.

I enjoyed most of his stories. Not all of them are part of the Cthulhu Mythos, though.

We have another thread on this subject in this subforum. Lots of good suggestions there as well.

My personal favourites are The Rats in the Wall (ignore the cat), At the Mountains of Madness, The Nameless City and The Music of Erich Zann.

Wouldn't be Lovecraft without some good old fashioned racism.

Speaking of which, Shadows over Innsmouth was my starting point.

The first story I read of him is Pickman's Model. I really think it's a good starting point. I also recommend The Color Out Of Space.

Due to his... writing style, I find it tricky to read his stories in original, though, and prefer German translations (which can be odd to read too, if they retain his preference for archaic words).

HPL has a couple of dozen good stories, and several dozen mediocre/horrible ones (most of these are juvenilia, and not found in the more popular anthologies).

I'd submit that it doesn't matter which you read first. I read a semi-rigorous study where readers were polled on their scariest/best/favorite Lovecraft story. No single story took the prize, but readers overwhelmingly voted for the first HPL story they'd ever read.

This suggests that Lovecraft's stories, though good, tend to be extremely similar in their themes & effects: once you've read one, you've read them all in a sense*. So don't get overly hung up on where to start, and just start!

* That's not necessarily a vice—once you've heard a single Ramones song, you've heard them all, but they're still all worth listening to.

edited 26th Apr '12 7:13:36 AM by Jhimmibhob

True, though it may be worth pointing out that late Lovecraft really isn't that much like early Lovecraft. For example, while I like the Dream Cycle stories (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, "Celephaïs", "The Cats of Ulthar") and admire the "Cthulhu Mythos" stuff ("The Call of Cthulhu", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"), my favourite Lovecraft stories are the early Poe-inflected ones: "The Music of Erich Zann", "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Tomb", in particular, are just awesome, and the fragment "Azathoth" is just flat-out gorgeous writing. So it's more like each period of his work is very similar in feel than his oeuvre as a whole.

edited 26th Apr '12 8:52:33 PM by JHM

I can get on board with that. So really, a beginning reader might want to pick one of the Cthulhu Mythos stories at random as a starting point. As with you, those might not end up being his favorites, but they're what people think of when they call something "Lovecraftian" and offer the most concentrated sense of what he's about.

If you like audiobook versions, the Psuedopod podcast did a rendition of "The Music of Erich Zann" as one of their milestones—I think it was the hundredth episode.

Probably. I'd say one story from each era, in reverse chronological order: Maybe "The Call of Cthulhu", then "Hypnos" or The Dream-Quest (long but fun), and finally "The Rats in the Walls". That should give a new reader a pretty good idea of what Lovecraft as a whole is like.

The Call Of Cthulhu and The Shadow Over Innsmouth can give you a good idea of what Lovecraft's generally like (they're not bad by any means, just flawed and kinda racist), The Colour Out Of Space can give you a good idea of what he's like at his absolute best, and The Dunwich Horror can give you a good idea of what he's like when he just goes 'fuck it' and has some grand-guignol fun.

Whatever the case, just grab a sufficiently large short-story collection (preferably including The Colour Out Of Space), and you'll do fine. There's no continuity in Lovecraft's work, just a set of recurring names and props that other writers chose to elaborate upon after his death.

My favorite is actually the Haunter in the Dark.

I highly recommend it.

I picked up a copy of this from my local library, started at the beginning and went from there. Its got most of the stories mentioned so far.

Is there a Lovecraft 101 I can be directed towards?

I'm also considering writing poetry from the point of view of the pantheon's entities, but I need to research the deities first. Any suggestions?

I consider Lovecraft overrated but he does have some good work. My favorites are "the Mountains of Madness" and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath although "Rats In The Walls" "Dreams of the Witch House" and "Pickman's Model" are good too.

What do you want answers to?

Are there any books that explain just what the Mythos is? It's the deities themselves I'm interested in.

Here's an article that might help. There are also references down at the bottom that might give you what your looking for.

It's worth remembering that whilst the Cthulhu Mythos was derived from Lovecraft's works, he didn't really come up with it himself - it was his successors, like August Derleth, who shaped the little recurring elements in his stories into a coherent whole.

Lovecraft wrote some poetry as well. Here's a list.