Getting into Lovecraft

Is it just me, or does The Descent seem suspiciously similar to "The Beast in the Cave"?

So far I've read "Mountains of Madness", "Call of Cthulhu", and just started "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and I'm wondering, do any Lovecraft stories have dialogue? Seriously, second hand narrative retellings being the basis of his stories is grating on my nerves.

Don't Lovecraft stories basically boil down to "Something happens, generally involving some sort of alien create/demon/ice cream salesman (note: ice cream salesmen may or may not cause insanity - I'm just covering my bases here) and everyone goes batshit insane, the end?

A few have some dialogue. I think. Can't remember any specific examples. His general style is dialogueless though.

For my money, the best collection, and an excellent place to start, is Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. It's got "The Music of Erich Zann", "The Rats in the Walls", "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Colour Out of Space", "The Dunwich Horror", "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and a few others.

I'll Recommend "H.P. Lovecraft: Great Tales of Horror."

I actually just recently read the Call of Cthulu and the Colour out of Space.

I'm actually inspired to write from the perspective of the Colours.

When I started out reading Lovecraft, I'd already learned quite a bit about his most famous works through Pop Cultural Osmosis. Those included The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Mountains of Madness. They were still good, but I was more impressed with some of the less known works like The Colour Out of Space and The Music of Erich Zann (which is amazing). That being said, if you want to get straight to the famous fish people and eldritch horrors, Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror are probably among the best.

I, for one, suggest that the OP read "Sweet Ermengarde."

... What?

edited 19th Aug '12 12:10:48 PM by Sparkysharps

I found The Call of Cthulhu rather...disappointing because it was basically a third-hand account, although I imagine some of that is it being over-hyped. Whisperer in the Darkness is currently my favorite.

edited 19th Aug '12 1:07:56 PM by Accela

For those complaining about the lack of dialog, you wouldn't be complaining if you had read more of Lovecraft's "dialog."

To wit: [clears throat, grabs "The Call of Cthulhu" off the shelf]

The more I think of it, though, the more I'd like to see Glengarry Glen Ross re-shot with Lovecraftian dialogue: "The fuming Mocha of antique Kush and nitid, daemon-haunted Brasil is for closers."

edited 21st Aug '12 11:20:32 AM by Jhimmibhob

You know, it sometimes amazes me how Lovecraft became so popular and enduring despite failing as a writer on so many, many levels.

I mean, I can see why (what he did well, he did very well), but it's still pretty astonishing when you come to think of it.

It's mostly his ideas that became popular. He actually didn't see much success when he was living.

He was extremely skillful at letting the reader's imagination do much of the work. The aliens in Whisperer in the Darkness are far more terrifying when you get only vague, panicked descriptions via a frightened old man's letters.

Which part of his writing are you talking about? Because if you're talking about the quality of his prose, for all this it is somewhat overblown on occasion, it makes up for it by being wonderfully evocative.

Enough so that it manages to send a chill up my spine even when talking about subject matters that I normally find fascinating (such as the non-Euclidian geometries and non-intuitive phenomena that are the bread and butter of certain branches of modern physics).

Lovecraft is no stylistic giant by a long shot, but his flaws look worse to modern readers than they really are. HPL used an elaborate, maximalist style that English and American literature is full of, and that was always considered perfectly fine until Hemingway came along. By the end of WWII, fashionable critics had managed to redefine "true literature" in a way that excluded nearly anything that wasn't Hemingwayesque concision. As with nearly every other artistic field in the 20th century, the modernists managed to bully and exclude everybody who wasn't them from sophisticated consideration.

Now, even if literary ornament hadn't been unrespectable for the last several generations, Lovecraft's prose would probably be considered subpar. But one doubts it'd look as ghastly as it sometimes does today.

Hey guys, I'm sorry if I'm taking over this thread a bit but I'm getting into Howard Phillips Lovecraft's works too. I want to know what 'complete collection' type book is best for reading them all.

Edit: Dude, why did I post after you again? I'm talking about the guy with post before me.

edited 24th Aug '12 11:01:23 AM by drakonsenshi

The last complete collection I saw was at least six books—I don't remember exactly how many; could have been almost twice that—and it was a paperback series published a couple of decades ago. But I'm not really sure you want a complete series. Lovecraft liked to encourage starting writers, and one way he did that was by collaborating with them. Including many writers that many people think should never have been encouraged. We may quibble about the quality of Lovecraft's prose here, but few would dispute that his personal prose was far superior to that seen in many of his collaborations, some of which can generously be called dreadful.

His works are also public domain, meaning you can find the full texts online with a minimal amount of searching.

Virtually all HPL's stuff is included in the three Arkham House hardcovers: The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, and Dagon. The only things not included are his poems, minor essays, and "revisions"—short stories that he either co-wrote or expanded on from other authors' initial drafts.

Barnes and Noble has a hardback collection of his stuff sans the poems, essays, and "revisions" as one big thing for 20 USD or so. The downsides being that it's huge, it has no footnotes, and it lacks illustrations.

If you can read French, Laffont has an Omnibus of 3 books containing his works, collaborations, poetry, essays, and pretty much all the things he ever wrote.

I've been looking at the Barnes and Noble one, if you(Aondeug) mean this one http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/barnes-noble-leatherbound-classics-hp-lovecraft-h-p-lovecraft/1106658815?ean=9781435122963 I've been looking at it a bit.

The Orion Books 'Necronomicon' collection contains just about everything Lovecrafty you'd ever want, plus suitably atmospheric illustrations. If you have fragile wrists, though, you might want to go for the e-book version - it's pretty huge.

edited 25th Aug '12 2:08:22 AM by Iaculus

Just for fun checked the Necronomicon's page total. 800+ pages... That's going to hurt my hands badly. Yes I have weak hands.. So what?