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The Dark Corners of the Earth article got me back in the Lovecraft mindset, so I figured I'd try to get a discussion thread going of cosmic horror stories/novels, what have you (also, I just want to talk about Lovecraft). Doesn't have to be specifically his work as long as its a horror story of the 'cosmic and spooky' variety, or even just discussion of the genre itself.
I'll start with a little mini-list of my top three Lovecraft stories, this time actually ranked in order for once. I'm going to try and keep them brief, but you know what to expect from me; feel free to skip them of course if you just want to post your own stuff.
1. The Whisperer in Darkness
It's a pretty close tie between this and number two over which comes out on top, but I think Whisperer just barely clinches out my number one. I love the setting of a spooky old New England forest and the isolated Akeley house, with his great descriptive work about it through-out, and the 'twist' so to speak at the end is really well executed. Its I think his greatest 'mood' piece, with real tension building up as the story goes on, through more of a focus on the characters for once compared to his usual impersonal focus. He often used characters just as framing devices more or less, but in this he spends a good amount of time with Wilmarth describing his reactions to what he was reading in the letters from poor old Akeley, and of course the last 40% of the story or so is directly told from Wilmarth's perspective which was again fairly rare for Lovecraft. It really helps add some atmosphere to this one by grounding it more onto the characters over the grander cosmic stuff, though they obviously do come out. This was one of the stories that fleshed out Nyarlathotep after only being described vaguely in the real short form story called the same thing, added in the Mi-go to the cosmic races (this time being described as crab-like rather than fungi, weirdly enough), and in one of the best scenes in the book also created 'the black goat of the woods with the thousand young', Shub-Niggurath (la! Shub-Niggurath!) which is some amazing imagery.
2. Call Of Cthulhu
Oh yeah, the one that started the whole thing. I think this story is the best example of Lovecraft's work, for both good and bad. It's some of his greatest descriptive work which was likely his greatest strength of course, and the passage describing Cthulhu awakening in the climax is one of my favourite paragraphs of writing ever. "The Thing cannot be described- there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad...". It's some some a great example of some of his weaker writing aspects, given that the whole thing is so very very dry and 80% of it is the academic main character reading and summarizing things other people wrote, and not a single character ever actually has a personality to them other than their title and role. I think it's a testament to just how good of a descriptive writer he was that he elevated so many of what would be fairly rote, boring stories by any other writer into the originators of the genre, owed to his start as a poet.
3. The Rats in The Walls
This was I think the first Lovecraft story I read, so perhaps nostalgia is why I put it so high. It's a really simple one, but it's just in his descriptions and mood that I think it holds it's own across his stories. This is one of his most personally focused ones which probably helps; the main character doesn't have much personality, but keeping things entirely in first person with him grounds it a little bit and there's not a single time he goes off for seven paragraphs paraphrasing something someone else wrote. The ending is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as it's one of my other personal favourite passages in any story; when the main character finally loses his mind (one of the only times a Lovecraft MC truly does) at the end after the reveal, the stream of consciousness raving as he completely devolves into some primal state is so beautifully done. "Why shouldn’t rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things? 'Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust! Ungl...ungl..rrrlh...chchch..."
I'll start with a little mini-list of my top three Lovecraft stories, this time actually ranked in order for once. I'm going to try and keep them brief, but you know what to expect from me; feel free to skip them of course if you just want to post your own stuff.
1. The Whisperer in Darkness
It's a pretty close tie between this and number two over which comes out on top, but I think Whisperer just barely clinches out my number one. I love the setting of a spooky old New England forest and the isolated Akeley house, with his great descriptive work about it through-out, and the 'twist' so to speak at the end is really well executed. Its I think his greatest 'mood' piece, with real tension building up as the story goes on, through more of a focus on the characters for once compared to his usual impersonal focus. He often used characters just as framing devices more or less, but in this he spends a good amount of time with Wilmarth describing his reactions to what he was reading in the letters from poor old Akeley, and of course the last 40% of the story or so is directly told from Wilmarth's perspective which was again fairly rare for Lovecraft. It really helps add some atmosphere to this one by grounding it more onto the characters over the grander cosmic stuff, though they obviously do come out. This was one of the stories that fleshed out Nyarlathotep after only being described vaguely in the real short form story called the same thing, added in the Mi-go to the cosmic races (this time being described as crab-like rather than fungi, weirdly enough), and in one of the best scenes in the book also created 'the black goat of the woods with the thousand young', Shub-Niggurath (la! Shub-Niggurath!) which is some amazing imagery.
2. Call Of Cthulhu
Oh yeah, the one that started the whole thing. I think this story is the best example of Lovecraft's work, for both good and bad. It's some of his greatest descriptive work which was likely his greatest strength of course, and the passage describing Cthulhu awakening in the climax is one of my favourite paragraphs of writing ever. "The Thing cannot be described- there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad...". It's some some a great example of some of his weaker writing aspects, given that the whole thing is so very very dry and 80% of it is the academic main character reading and summarizing things other people wrote, and not a single character ever actually has a personality to them other than their title and role. I think it's a testament to just how good of a descriptive writer he was that he elevated so many of what would be fairly rote, boring stories by any other writer into the originators of the genre, owed to his start as a poet.
3. The Rats in The Walls
This was I think the first Lovecraft story I read, so perhaps nostalgia is why I put it so high. It's a really simple one, but it's just in his descriptions and mood that I think it holds it's own across his stories. This is one of his most personally focused ones which probably helps; the main character doesn't have much personality, but keeping things entirely in first person with him grounds it a little bit and there's not a single time he goes off for seven paragraphs paraphrasing something someone else wrote. The ending is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as it's one of my other personal favourite passages in any story; when the main character finally loses his mind (one of the only times a Lovecraft MC truly does) at the end after the reveal, the stream of consciousness raving as he completely devolves into some primal state is so beautifully done. "Why shouldn’t rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things? 'Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust! Ungl...ungl..rrrlh...chchch..."
