A review by fictionfan
The Classic Horror Stories by Roger Luckhurst, H.P. Lovecraft
4.0
Beneath the bloated, fungoid moon…
"As the ghastly light shone hideously down from the bloated, fungoid moon, the alien and unnameable thing from another aeon revealed itself as so loathsome, blasphemous and hellish that it would drive me to the uttermost edge of madness if I were to describe it..."
OK, I made that sentence up, but I bet anybody who's read HP Lovecraft was fooled for a moment. ;-)
This book brings together some of HPL's stories published from about 1926 onwards. Each story is extensively and interestingly annotated to tell when it was written, where published and how it fits in not just to HPL's own "Cthulhu Mythos" but also the wider landscape of "weird tales". There is also an excellent introductory essay by Roger Luckhurst which tells us about HPL's life and puts his work into the context of the period in which he was writing. Luckhurst's argument in part is that, love him or hate him, HPL has remained an influence on writers of weird fiction up to the present day. He credits HPL with being one of the main writers who moved horror away from the human-centric gothic tale, with its vampires, crucifixes and garlic, to a universe where man is an insignificant and helpless part of a greater whole.
I admit it - I thought the stories ranged from loathsomely mediocre to hellishly poor myself, (even though I've always been partial to mushrooms). Luckhurst quotes Edmund Wilson on the subject of HPL's tendency never to use one overblown adjective when four would do..."Surely one of the primary rules for writing an effective tale of horror is never to use any of these words - especially if you are going, at the end, to produce an invisible whistling octopus." My feelings precisely!
However, whether a fan of HPL's style or not, the introductory essay and annotations provide interesting insights into a genre that has had considerable influence over the years and those alone make the book a worthwhile read, hence my four star rating.
"As the ghastly light shone hideously down from the bloated, fungoid moon, the alien and unnameable thing from another aeon revealed itself as so loathsome, blasphemous and hellish that it would drive me to the uttermost edge of madness if I were to describe it..."
OK, I made that sentence up, but I bet anybody who's read HP Lovecraft was fooled for a moment. ;-)
This book brings together some of HPL's stories published from about 1926 onwards. Each story is extensively and interestingly annotated to tell when it was written, where published and how it fits in not just to HPL's own "Cthulhu Mythos" but also the wider landscape of "weird tales". There is also an excellent introductory essay by Roger Luckhurst which tells us about HPL's life and puts his work into the context of the period in which he was writing. Luckhurst's argument in part is that, love him or hate him, HPL has remained an influence on writers of weird fiction up to the present day. He credits HPL with being one of the main writers who moved horror away from the human-centric gothic tale, with its vampires, crucifixes and garlic, to a universe where man is an insignificant and helpless part of a greater whole.
I admit it - I thought the stories ranged from loathsomely mediocre to hellishly poor myself, (even though I've always been partial to mushrooms). Luckhurst quotes Edmund Wilson on the subject of HPL's tendency never to use one overblown adjective when four would do..."Surely one of the primary rules for writing an effective tale of horror is never to use any of these words - especially if you are going, at the end, to produce an invisible whistling octopus." My feelings precisely!
However, whether a fan of HPL's style or not, the introductory essay and annotations provide interesting insights into a genre that has had considerable influence over the years and those alone make the book a worthwhile read, hence my four star rating.