After reading this collection I had a great respect for Lovecraft's imagination, and his ability to build a chilling and creepy atmosphere. The chronological order of stories allows the reader to experience Lovecraft's growth in abilities as an author. During the first story Dagon, I wondered why I was reading this at all. The story seemed to be a prop to drop as many names as possible to show off the literary education of the author:
...would have excited the envy of a Doré...beyond the imagination of a Poe or Bulwer...Vast, Polyphemus-like...But things get better. The Picture in the House managed to build a lot of creeping fear for a very short story and The Outsider was a really nice idea that I think could have been built into an entire novel as the main character explores the foreign world up above and we learn about his world below.
Herbert West - Reanimator drove me nuts with the constant re-caps. I guess this was originally published as a serial, requiring some level of introduction for new readers, but it was maddening to read a number of background-filling sentences like "It was in those college days that he had begun his terrible experiments..." every few pages. I did like the talking head though, that was cute.
The Hound brought us back to name-dropping, *sigh* although overall the story was pretty clever.
While Lovecraft's imagination is fantastic, and his ability to chill the room is impressive, these talents vastly exceed his actual writing ability. He uses a couple of very lazy tropes, namely "and then I woke up" and "too horrible to describe".
In He, a miraculous escape is made. How convenient the protagonist just woke up outside safe and sound with no explanation required?
The man who found me said I must have crawled a long way despite my broken bones, for a trail of blood stretched off as far as he dared look...report could state no more than that I had appeared from a place unknown...For "too horrible to describe" we have, in Cool Air:
What was, or had been, on the couch I cannot and dare not say here.and in The Hound:
I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expeditions, or catalogue even partly the worst of the trophies adorning the nameless museum we prepared in the great stone house...and in Herbert West - Reanimator:
The scene I cannot describe - I should faint if I tried it...If there is a word that Lovecraft enjoys above no other it is "Cyclopean". Look it up, you'll read it in every story.
The last few stories are brilliant (by the way The Rats in the Walls was my favourite of the earlier ones). Still plenty of weaknesses in the writing, but the powerful imagination and creepiness makes up for everything. I loved The Colour Out of Space, The Whisperer in Darkness, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
Particularly in The Whisperer in Darkness I had to suspend my disbelief that Akeley would have shootouts with aliens every night and his only response was to write a few letters to a stranger and buy new police dogs every other day from some local inexhaustible pool that didn't ask any questions. And that Wilmarth was gullible enough to fall into a comically obvious trap. Still, I equate the latter with the urge to yell "look behind you" in a horror movie.
Overall my favourite moment from all the stories was the narrator's flight from Innsmouth in The Shadow Over Innsmouth while being pursued by a legion of underwater horrors. Brilliant, creepy stuff.
It's hard to rate a collection of short stories, some of which are weak, others amazing. The collection is definitely worth a read, even just so you understand all the random Cthulhu pop culture references.
3.5 stars.
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