Lovecraft. should and why?

How do you get into a mythos that seems so huge? Also is it as depressing and terror inducing as it seems. And does it makes sense?

By starting with The Colour Out Of Space and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, no, and no.

How about with the Call Of Cthulhu? (I already have the book that contains that, and probably both stories, so this is a rhetorical question)

Voyager has published three omnibus editions which have most of Lovecraft's work, but they don't include everything, so if you want the lot, you'll have to track down a collection that overlaps with them to an annoying extent. Still, they're a great way to get into it. At the Mountains of Madness and other stories sticks you right into the deep end with Lovecraft's mature visions of Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, and Cthulhu, while Dagon and Other Macabre Tales starts with his earliest work and moves through most of his short stories in the order they were written. Notably, the stories in ATMOMAOS reference those in DAOMT quite a bit, so it might an idea to start with the latter.

There's also a third volume, The Haunter of the Dark and other stories; that seems to be mostly stuff unrelated to the mythos, but it does include The Call of Cthulhu.

edited 5th Mar '10 5:26:04 AM by VampireBuddha

Also be aware that it's not exactly a coherent "mythos" as Lovecraft wrote it. Rather than forming some kind of grand Myth Arc, the mythos stories are tied together by certain names and ideas. You might be able to browbeat them into a narrative, but it's better to read each individual story on its own terms.

edited 5th Mar '10 7:11:31 AM by Durazno

Lovecraft himself didn't write all that much. And the number of his stories that are actually readable is even lower.

I'd recommend starting with At The Mountains Of Madness. It's probably one of his better stories, and one of the easiest for the uninitiated.

The idea of a "mythos" is a little misleading; Lovecraft himself didn't devote much effort to generating a consistent cosmology (and indeed actively demythologized his stuff with At The Mountains Of Madness and The Shadow Out Of Time, among other things). August Derleth is the guy that tried to hack it all together into an actual mythology, but what he came up with isn't particularly good. There have been various attempts to do the same thing since Derleth, with varying quality; I'm rather fond of Charles Stross's take on it, but you can't really call his stuff straight-up Lovecraftian horror.

The most important works Lovecraft wrote are The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, The Call Of Cthulhu, At The Mountains Of Madness, Herbert West, Re-Animator (the first modern zombie story!), and The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath — the latter mostly because it's the best survey of Lovecraft's Dreamlands setting, which is quite different from his best-known stories.

The best stories he wrote, in my opinion, are At The Mountains Of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Colour Out Of Space, The Rats In The Walls (just ignore the cat's name), Pickmans Model, and The Shunned House. The Cats Of Ulthar is worth reading too — it's quite short — but it's a Dreamlands story and thus isn't very Lovecraftian.

edited 5th Mar '10 4:08:20 PM by Nornagest

Don't forget The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward. It's usually packaged in the same book as At The Mounttains Of Madness, and is probably the most Lovecraftian of Lovecraft's works.

By Lovecraftian do you mean racist? Ok I'll leave now.

I'd start with The Colour Out Of Space and move onto The Call Of Cthulhu. If you disliked both of those, odds are you won't like the rest of Lovecraft's stories.

edited 6th Mar '10 9:35:54 AM by Myrmidon

Thanks for the advice everyone. I just wondered whether I needed to be in the loop.

^^ I'm also aware of that aspect but hey it's sometimes fun to read things and become self rightously angry about values dissonance.

edited 6th Mar '10 5:39:31 PM by wellinever

I wouldn't really worry about trying to keep track of everything. Lovecraft didn't. Just read the stories as you find them, and try to judge each on its own merits.

Get ready to read the words "ominous" and "eldritch" over and over again.

Don't forget "rugose", "squamous", "Cyclopean"...

Also, "demoniacal" and, even better, "cacodemoniacal."

(Though, to HP's credit, I only remember seeing that last one in a story that was intentionally tongue-in-cheek.)

I'd recommend starting with At The Mountains Of Madness. It's probably one of his better stories, and one of the easiest for the uninitiated.

Personally I found At The Mountains of Madness and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath to both be boring. And I generally like Lovecraft.

@OP: I say, pick up any Lovecraft collection you can find, start with the shortest story in the book, and work your way up.

^ It seems we have radically different tastes. "Dream-Quest" was one of my favorites.

Yeah HPL was a racist. Urm, 'cept his favourite artist was Japanese, he married a Jew, his best friend was another Jew, and he was about the only person in his time who never used the word "N*gger" in speech or print. When dealing with Lovecraft, it's best not to try to pigeonhole him - just decide if you think his stuff is brilliant or cr*p and act accordingly...

Hold on - never used the N-word in everyday speech? Did you see what he named his cat? Oh, and then there were the panic attacks he had in mixed-race crowds. Even if he wasn't 'traditionally' racist (a hard point to prove), he was almost certainly a clinical xenophobe.

Whilst Norn's list of his best work is pretty accurate (The Color Out Of Space is my favourite of his stories), I'd also add one of his more obscure shorts, Under The Pyramids. Wonderfully atmospheric. Also treats Arabs in general as lying, murderous catspaws of Eldritch Abominations, but after a while with Lovecraft, you sort of get used to that.

edited 22nd Oct '10 2:07:46 PM by Iaculus

^ We only have his wife's word that he had panic attacks in mixed-ethnic crowds. According to a lot of his best friends like Robert Bloch and co, he was not racist or xenophobic at all.

As for the topic question: Read a few Lovecraft stories to get the idea, continue if you're interested, but DO NOT start with either At the Mountains of Madness or Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Those should wait until you have some experience with Mr Lovecraft.

(Personally, I recommend either The Hound or The Rats in the Walls or The Call of Cthulhu as starting places)

I started with At the Mountains of Madness; not sure what's wrong with doing that. I started with this volume, which has both At the Mountains of Madness and Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Neither seemed particularly off-putting for a 'newbie'.

Lovecraft also died of stomach cancer eating cold beans out of the can. His postal bromance with Robert E. Howard, author of Conan, has not yet been turned into Crack Fic. Which disappoints me, because calling such a Crack Fic "At The Brokeback Mountains of Madness" has so much potential.

@Dantes

I know what you mean about At The Mountains Of Madness being boring. I found a lot of the beginning and a lot of the end very interesting, but Lovecraft spends the entire middle section of the story in flashback mode. The demystification of the Old Ones in that works to set up the concept of a true threat, but it's terribly dragging.

It'll be interesting to see how Del Toro approaches turning it into a film, since there's very little direct dialogue and much more implicit dialogue. Del Toro would probably appreciate that spending a lot of time on flashbacks is probably a poor idea, so we're likely to get an expanded perspective on the beginning and end with most of the expository cut entirely.

Which would make it a lot more frightening, to my mind.

Well, based on one of his works Lovecraft would consider the current US President an eldritch abomination so... yeah, Lovecraft was racist. Very much so.