For whatever reason, and I have no ready theory for why it should be
so, Horror has proven to be one of the most novel and enduring of America's
literary forms. From Washington Irving and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
to Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems, to The Turn of the Screw (Henry
James' only worthwhile work), on to the great pulp writers like Lovecraft
and Robert E. Howard, right on up to the overrated but ridiculously successful
Stephen King and the innovative but underappreciated Dan Simmons and Robert
McCammon, we just keep churning out great horror writers and stories.
HP Lovecraft earned his place in this company with his supremely creepy
short fiction, which injected both intergalactic elements and the mythos
that he created involving the dread text of the Necronomicon. At
the Mountains of Madness is perhaps his finest work and is obviously the
forerunner of such subsequent horror staples as The Thing and Alien.
It tells the story of a doomed party of Antarctic explorers who uncover
the remains of a lost civilization, the Old Ones. Turns out, these
Old Ones bioengineered the Earth, but were vanquished by their own creations,
who have now been reawakened by these unwitting explorers.
Lovecraft's writing is mannered and affected, which may keep him from
a mass audience, but it retains a certain gothic power and he continues
to be a cult favorite.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (B+)
Websites:
Howard Lovecraft Links:
-ESSAY: H.P. Lovecraft's Afterlife: He was an atheist and a nihilist, and he's more influential than ever. (JOHN J. MILLER, March 15, 2005, National Review)
Book-related and General Links:
-H.P. Lovecraft
Archive
-The
Cthulhu Mythos: A Guide (Joseph F. Morales)
-H.P.
Lovecraft (Alan Gullette)
-Iä,
Shub-Niggurath!: H.P. Lovecraft Page
-REVIEW:
THE DUNWICH HORROR AND OTHERS By H. P. Lovecraft (Edna Stumpf, NY Times
Book Review: IN SHORT)
-REVIEW:
H.P Lovecraft: A Life by S.T. Joshi (Paul T. Riddell, Tangent)
-ESSAY:
The King of Weird (Joyce Carol Oates, NY Review of Books)
H.P. Lovecraft: A Life by S.T. Joshi
BOOKS BY H.P. LOVECRAFT
The Dunwich Horror and Others with texts edited by S.T. Joshi
At the Mountains of Madness & Other Novels edited by S.T. Joshi
Dagon and Other Macabre Tales edited by S.T. Joshi
Miscellaneous Writings edited by S.T. Joshi
Selected Letters edited by S.T. Joshi
Vol. I: 1911-1924 (out of print)
Vol. II: 1925-1929, $10.00
Vol. III: 1929-1931 (forthcoming)
Vol. IV: 1932-1934, $12.50
Vol. V: 1934-1937, $12.50
-ESSAY:
Julian Symons: The Heavy Fantastic
-ESSAY:
Why Lovecraft Still Matters: The Magical Power of Transformative Fiction
by Don Webb
-ESSAY:
The Poetry of H. P. LOVECRAFT by L. Sprague de Camp (as edited by Jonathan
Vos Post)
-ESSAY:
Calling Cthulhu: H.P. Lovecraft's Magick Realism by Erik Davis
-ESSAY:
H. P. Lovecraft and the Myth of the 20th Century (Joseph F. Morales)
-ESSAY:
Poe & Lovecraft by Robert Bloch
Comments:
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