Thirty-one Days of Lovecraft: Day 5

Sketch based off of 'The Other Gods'.

Yeah, I didn't read on Day 4. Who cares? Let's talk about how good of a writer Lovecraft is after the jump.





I don't know if I've really written about this yet, but Lovecraft is a gifted writer. In a sense, this should go without saying. An author doesn't have the staying power that Lovecraft has had without having a talent. Like, there is no Barnes and Noble Classics Edition if his stories were neat, but there was no talent to go with it. After all, it's not like Lovecraft was the only one submitting to Weird Tales.

But, Lovecraft has some absolutely brilliant pose. He can set the tone and mood of a story in a few sentences. He does a masterful job of having the narrator's terror feel real. And his descriptions of some twisted vision are downright poetic. Take for instance, this line from "The Moon-Bog": "And that night my dreams of piping flutes and marble peristyles came to a sudden and disquieting end; for upon the city in the valley I saw a pestilence descend, and then a frightful avalanche of wooded slopes that covered the dead bodies in the streets and left unburied only the temple of Artemis on the high peak, where the aged moon-priestess Cleis lay cold and silent with a crown of ivory on her silver head."

What a fantastic line. Lovecraft has this ability to suck you in with a sentence, and that sentence usually holds you in through the story. And it's worth it, because then you get some neat lines like, "Half gliding, half floating in the air, the white-clad bog-wraiths were slowly retreating toward the still waters and the island ruin in fantastic formations suggesting some ancient and solemn ceremonial dance."

That's the most beautiful description of a monster approaching I think I've ever read.

One other thing that Lovecraft is good at is ending lines. The first ending line of this anthology is a bit disappointing, that being from "The Beast in the Cave" is: "The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the unfathomed cave was, or had at one time been, a MAN!!!" Now, this was a 15-year old writing, but still, three exclamation points?

Compare that with the ending of "The Quest of Iranon" where a man searches for a fictional land where he was once a prince. Finding out that it was a myth that he had told himself, he walks into quicksands to his death. Lovecraft concludes the story: "That night something of youth and beauty died in the elder world." It would be easy to write of Iranon as some crazed romantic or delusional, but Lovecraft's end lends pity towards the character.

The Moon-Bog has a more violent ending, but it finishes off the tale of madness and hubris off well: "Crazed as I was, I saw in the awful shadow a monstrous resemblence -- a nauseous, unbelievable caricature -- a blasphemous effigy of him who had been Denys Barry."

Neat!

Other musings: Probably my favorite story in this section was "The Other Gods". Basically, there used to be gods on Earth, but they left as man grew stronger, but sometimes they come back. A prophet says he'll go watch them, and he fears nothing. You probably should, dude! It does not end well for said prophet.

The Outsider is basically Frankenstein told from the monster's perspective. Some really good writing, but not the most original story

"The Nameless City" was delightful. There were Lizard People that tore men apart, but they are no more. Also, I sometimes run across people making connections between Lovecraft and "A Song of Ice and Fire" (one of the reasons I wanted to read Lovecraft) and the couplet, "That is not dead wich can eternal lie/And with strange aeons even death may die" gives me some serious Greyjoy vibes. Here's a video you can watch to get a primer on that, if you're so interested.

Madness Meter: Lots of it! I really liked "The Music of Erich Zann" where the music that Erich Zann plays opens a portal to another dimension, causing the narrator to go mad. Barzai, the hubris having character from The Other Gods was certainly mad for thinking we could just walk up to the gods. The narrator in The Moon-Bug goes mad from his dreams. You could argue that Iranon is mad for believing in the fictional land.

But, the best was probably The Nameless City where the narrator finds, well, a nameless city, and a temple and goes mad from what he sees. Basically, it was a city for the Lizard People who killed humans and aren't we glad they aren't around anymore.

Is that racist? I didn't really find much in this section.

Up Next: Herbert West - Reanimator. Thought I would take one story, though a longer one, and break it down.