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A review by barry_x
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Wow, after a period of about eight years I have finally finished this book! The book is a collection of all H.P. Lovecraft's short stories, novellas and novels, excepting collaborative works. It's an absolute monster of a book compiled by the Arkham Archivist available for free here https://arkhamarchivist.com/free-comp....
I distinctly remember from my teens hearing the words 'Lovecraftian' ascribed to creepy, cosmic fiction and I knew a little of the Cthulhu Mythos through playing 'Call of Cthulhu' RPG games, and of course references were dropped into heavy metal records all the time and all the movies that I didn't know where about Lovecraft but where, so I always kind of knew it existed and had an idea about it without ever reading anything by Lovecraft.
So, I picked up this collection, and basically read a short story every now and then when I was between books but after a wave of enthusiasm I probably put it back down for about four of five years, but for some perverse reason I didn't ever classify it as 'did-not-finish' thinking one day I would go back to it. In 2022 I made a bit of a commitment to pick it up again and this morning I finally finished it (so can I have a badge please!).
So what to make of it? It seems rather criminal and yet fitting that Lovecraft was underappreciated during his lifetime. It's hard to imagine that these stories which were barely published and read in the 1920's and 30's have spawned a Mythos that other writers have run with and that has spawned multimedia. Of course, the role playing game probably has a lot to do with this from the 1980's onwards, but there was a wealth of fiction reimagining and working with the Mythos in the decades before then. In some ways Lovecraft could have easily been forgotten.
I still remember my first exposure to his early stories in 2015, and how I loved his use of language, his turn of phrase, how nothing quite read like it. One always feels you are descending into a particular universe, a particular mind. I felt it was so rich, so evocative, often overwrought but better for it. At first I felt, 'how have I missed this', I was so enamoured with it.
And yet, after a period of time, I quickly found the stories too similar, and always demanding significant attention without the pay-off. I liked needing to pay close attention for a while, but all to often I find the stories hard to read and engage with.
Most of his stories include young bookish gentlemen discovering old books via academia and antiquarianism and learning more than they should. Cosmic beings from space or cults or ancient civilisations hint at what we know of as reality is miniscule compared to the cosmos. It can get quite 'samey' but later in the collection once you see the same names, same books, or mad prophets or creatures from space and time mentioned you can quickly build up the universe. I quite liked this later on in the book, thinking back to where I had read something before and thinking about how it all came together. The richness has been used by many for decades...
Many of the stories describe cosmic, dreamlike travel, often to places on Earth (or in our dreams), almost like another dimension. Considering the period he was writing in, his vividness and and visual descriptions of things that perhaps could only be captured by art is astonishing. And yet, sometimes these descriptions are the downfall because they are so overwrought and complex that it is an effort to try and understand them and stay with it.
Indeed, 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' is a huge sprawling braindump of an exploration into dreamworld and quite frankly is one of the worst things I have ever read (to be fair it was unpublished in Lovecraft's lifetime).
However, his later works really show a writer getting into his stride, and it is hear that a lot of his Mythos starts to come together. Some of his more well known stories are also his best ones. I loved 'At the Mountains of Madness' which is a brilliant pulpy adventure to Antarctica with aeroplanes and everything (which would have been very novel then). I had a real blast with 'Shadows Over Innsmouth' which is genuinely really very creepy but had me smiling too, remembering a fun game with Deep Ones once (even though it is a barely veiled story about the 'horror' of race mixing). 'The Color From Outer Space' manages to be really tense and scary too, and seems to be a blueprint for the 1950's sci-fi trope of something 'atomic' from space landing in a field. 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' is rather brilliant story about possession. 'The Whisperer in Darkness' feels way ahead of it's time too and is utterly cosmic whilst tapping into the horror of being stalked by unknown forces. 'The Dreams in the Witch House' freaked me out with the 'cosmic haunted house' and how sinister the witches were. So when he's good, he's very good indeed...
And yet, one can't read Lovecraft without addressing the bigotry in his work. His works are filled with racism, anyone not white (or even from how he viewed 'lesser' European people, like Italians) are treated as people to fear and to be shunned or loathed. If a white man is prodding cosmic creatures he's doing it in a library through academia, if anyone else does it they do so in base rituals as if they are little more than subhuman. He's absolutely terrified of miscegenation and it is baked in to many of his stories. Anti-semitism is rife in his early work also. Similarly, he seems to be terrified of women too, considering them of inferior intellect. Indeed, you will be hard pushed to find a female character of note in the collection, with perhaps the exception of 'The Thing on the Doorstep' (a story I enjoyed and actually cheered on the female character, even if I did roll my eyes often at the horror of a woman being educated and taking over a man's brain).
I don't think we can use the 'standards of the time' angle here also, because although attitudes to race and gender have changed, not all writers were so virulently racist. And even so, in 2023 we can only view art in the context we experience it in - so if something transgresses our moral compass today we can't say it's okay, because our emotional response is from now. It doesn't necessarily change the context the stories were written in, but it is valid to judge any art by our standards now. Indeed Lovecraft has been given relative literary immortality retrospectively, and yet also has a laser focus on his bigotry as a consequence.
As a white man, I have a certain degree of privilege and dare I say it, some racist attitudes do not harm me in ways they harm others. That said, some of these stories are exceptionally offensive, not just 'a bit racist' or with the odd casual racist sentence. The whole purpose of the story is one of fear of anyone not white. 'The Horror at Red Hook' is perhaps the most infamous example of 'swarthy' immigrants who can't be trusted, but by far the worst for me was 'Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family' which is basically about people going to Africa and fucking apes. It's absolutely disgusting, and some of these stories basically made me put the book down for a long time of a few years.
Is Lovecraft redeemable? Many authors have explored this (N.K. Jemisin has had a thoughtful go at this in 'The City We Became'). I think we can critically analyse him and take what we like and ditch what we don't.
Three stars feels like a cop-out. There are some brilliant stories in here and some unreadable ones. I could easily give this one star for the horrible bigotry that is unpleasant to read and yet I did stay with it. I could equally give it five stars for it's immeasurable influence over fiction, cinema, video games, rpg games and much, much more.
I'm sticking with 3 and I am glad I read this.
I distinctly remember from my teens hearing the words 'Lovecraftian' ascribed to creepy, cosmic fiction and I knew a little of the Cthulhu Mythos through playing 'Call of Cthulhu' RPG games, and of course references were dropped into heavy metal records all the time and all the movies that I didn't know where about Lovecraft but where, so I always kind of knew it existed and had an idea about it without ever reading anything by Lovecraft.
So, I picked up this collection, and basically read a short story every now and then when I was between books but after a wave of enthusiasm I probably put it back down for about four of five years, but for some perverse reason I didn't ever classify it as 'did-not-finish' thinking one day I would go back to it. In 2022 I made a bit of a commitment to pick it up again and this morning I finally finished it (so can I have a badge please!).
So what to make of it? It seems rather criminal and yet fitting that Lovecraft was underappreciated during his lifetime. It's hard to imagine that these stories which were barely published and read in the 1920's and 30's have spawned a Mythos that other writers have run with and that has spawned multimedia. Of course, the role playing game probably has a lot to do with this from the 1980's onwards, but there was a wealth of fiction reimagining and working with the Mythos in the decades before then. In some ways Lovecraft could have easily been forgotten.
I still remember my first exposure to his early stories in 2015, and how I loved his use of language, his turn of phrase, how nothing quite read like it. One always feels you are descending into a particular universe, a particular mind. I felt it was so rich, so evocative, often overwrought but better for it. At first I felt, 'how have I missed this', I was so enamoured with it.
And yet, after a period of time, I quickly found the stories too similar, and always demanding significant attention without the pay-off. I liked needing to pay close attention for a while, but all to often I find the stories hard to read and engage with.
Most of his stories include young bookish gentlemen discovering old books via academia and antiquarianism and learning more than they should. Cosmic beings from space or cults or ancient civilisations hint at what we know of as reality is miniscule compared to the cosmos. It can get quite 'samey' but later in the collection once you see the same names, same books, or mad prophets or creatures from space and time mentioned you can quickly build up the universe. I quite liked this later on in the book, thinking back to where I had read something before and thinking about how it all came together. The richness has been used by many for decades...
Many of the stories describe cosmic, dreamlike travel, often to places on Earth (or in our dreams), almost like another dimension. Considering the period he was writing in, his vividness and and visual descriptions of things that perhaps could only be captured by art is astonishing. And yet, sometimes these descriptions are the downfall because they are so overwrought and complex that it is an effort to try and understand them and stay with it.
Indeed, 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' is a huge sprawling braindump of an exploration into dreamworld and quite frankly is one of the worst things I have ever read (to be fair it was unpublished in Lovecraft's lifetime).
However, his later works really show a writer getting into his stride, and it is hear that a lot of his Mythos starts to come together. Some of his more well known stories are also his best ones. I loved 'At the Mountains of Madness' which is a brilliant pulpy adventure to Antarctica with aeroplanes and everything (which would have been very novel then). I had a real blast with 'Shadows Over Innsmouth' which is genuinely really very creepy but had me smiling too, remembering a fun game with Deep Ones once (even though it is a barely veiled story about the 'horror' of race mixing). 'The Color From Outer Space' manages to be really tense and scary too, and seems to be a blueprint for the 1950's sci-fi trope of something 'atomic' from space landing in a field. 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' is rather brilliant story about possession. 'The Whisperer in Darkness' feels way ahead of it's time too and is utterly cosmic whilst tapping into the horror of being stalked by unknown forces. 'The Dreams in the Witch House' freaked me out with the 'cosmic haunted house' and how sinister the witches were. So when he's good, he's very good indeed...
And yet, one can't read Lovecraft without addressing the bigotry in his work. His works are filled with racism, anyone not white (or even from how he viewed 'lesser' European people, like Italians) are treated as people to fear and to be shunned or loathed. If a white man is prodding cosmic creatures he's doing it in a library through academia, if anyone else does it they do so in base rituals as if they are little more than subhuman. He's absolutely terrified of miscegenation and it is baked in to many of his stories. Anti-semitism is rife in his early work also. Similarly, he seems to be terrified of women too, considering them of inferior intellect. Indeed, you will be hard pushed to find a female character of note in the collection, with perhaps the exception of 'The Thing on the Doorstep' (a story I enjoyed and actually cheered on the female character, even if I did roll my eyes often at the horror of a woman being educated and taking over a man's brain).
I don't think we can use the 'standards of the time' angle here also, because although attitudes to race and gender have changed, not all writers were so virulently racist. And even so, in 2023 we can only view art in the context we experience it in - so if something transgresses our moral compass today we can't say it's okay, because our emotional response is from now. It doesn't necessarily change the context the stories were written in, but it is valid to judge any art by our standards now. Indeed Lovecraft has been given relative literary immortality retrospectively, and yet also has a laser focus on his bigotry as a consequence.
As a white man, I have a certain degree of privilege and dare I say it, some racist attitudes do not harm me in ways they harm others. That said, some of these stories are exceptionally offensive, not just 'a bit racist' or with the odd casual racist sentence. The whole purpose of the story is one of fear of anyone not white. 'The Horror at Red Hook' is perhaps the most infamous example of 'swarthy' immigrants who can't be trusted, but by far the worst for me was 'Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family' which is basically about people going to Africa and fucking apes. It's absolutely disgusting, and some of these stories basically made me put the book down for a long time of a few years.
Is Lovecraft redeemable? Many authors have explored this (N.K. Jemisin has had a thoughtful go at this in 'The City We Became'). I think we can critically analyse him and take what we like and ditch what we don't.
Three stars feels like a cop-out. There are some brilliant stories in here and some unreadable ones. I could easily give this one star for the horrible bigotry that is unpleasant to read and yet I did stay with it. I could equally give it five stars for it's immeasurable influence over fiction, cinema, video games, rpg games and much, much more.
I'm sticking with 3 and I am glad I read this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Xenophobia, and Antisemitism
Moderate: Misogyny