10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Call of Cthulhu, January 10, 2010
"...all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."
I have received numerous recommendations over the years for the work of horror legend H.P. Lovecraft, and have often been met with surprise when I admit that I had never read his work. While I am a horror and gothic enthusiast I always felt apprehensive about Lovecraft's work - after all, how could he possibly compare to such greats as Edgar Allen Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu?
Despite having the Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (edited by Joyce Carol Oates) sitting on my shelf, I decided to download Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" on my Kindle2 after seeing it mentioned in a group on LibraryThing. ( I apologize now, because I cannot for the life of me remember who brought it up recently, but it inspired me to give Lovecraft a try once and for all).
I am pleased to say that I was not disappointed. "The Call of Cthulhu" is a delightfully dark and twisted tale that has the ability to draw readers in from its first mysterious pages. The tale is presented from the point of view of a secondary source (the nephew and executor of a deceased professor) stumbling upon the research and first-person accounts regarding an ancient and malevolent entity by the name of "Cthulhu." As cult members practice dark arts in order to revive this creature from its watery depths, the narrator realizes with horror that it has already been done, and instills in readers a kind of apprehension that such a thing can be innocently done again, much to the detriment of all living creatures.
Lovecraft's style is at once elegant and non evasive, so his language adds to the understanding and delight of the reader as opposed to detracting from the story with superfluous prose. The evolution from nineteenth-century gothic literature is evident, which helps to ground the short story in a strong literary history, while allowing it to evolve into what audiences now call "horror."
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Ever wonder the origins of Cthulhu?, June 20, 2011
This review is from: The Call of Cthulhu (Kindle Edition)
This is a short story with very descriptive details about H.P. Lovecraft's brainchild Cthulhu. It discusses several accounts from a scholarly perspective of their experiences with the ancient ones.
Beware: By the end, you too will know too much.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Penguin Lovecraft Editions Rock My Yuggoth!, January 25, 2010
I've been an obsess'd Lovecraft fan since 1973, and these days are the very best days for Lovecraft fans because of the amazing & tireless efforts of S. T. Joshi. Where he gets his energy I don't know. I remember how stunned I was upon hearing the news that the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft was to be publish'd by Penguin Classics. They are my favorite publisher of paperback editions, and the idea of owning THREE Penguin books of Lovecraft's awesome tales made me moan with adventurous expectancy and nameless pleasures. I was not disappointed.
S. T.'s introduction is quite informative, discussing matters of Lovecraft's biography as it pertains to his career as a literary artist. Joshi knows this biographical history so well he probably chants it in his sleep; but he never makes it dull, and I love reading about HPL's life, especially in relationship to his Works. Joshi likes to insist that we can best appreciate Lovecraft's fiction by understanding his mind. He writes:
"Lovecraft's fiction must be understood in the context of the philosophical thought that he evolved over a lifetime of study and observation. The core of that thought--derived from readings of such ancient Greek philosophers as Demoncritus and Epicurus as well as from absorption of the discoveries and nineteenth-century physics, chemistry, and biology--is mechanical materialism. This is the belief that the universe is a 'mechanism' operating according to fixed laws (although these may not all be known to human beings), and that there can be no immaterial substance such as a soul or spirit."
Well, I'm a simple-minded guy, and when I pick up a book of classic weird fiction the main thing I am seeking is that what I am reading succeeds as supernatural literature. I don't think a fourteen year old needs to understand HPL's philosophy to ascertain his brilliance as a story teller. When I write my own weird fiction, my one primary goal is that my readers find it strange, disturbing, scary. If it fails at that it has failed completely. The stories in this collection of Lovecraft's tales does not fail in any way -- despite the clueless critics who call him boring, monotonous, a bad writer, and other such bogus nonsense. In "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction," (which can be found in Volume 2: Literary Criticism of HPL's COLLECTED ESSAYS publish'd by Hippocampus Press) Lovecraft writes:
My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclinations best--one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis. These stories frequently emphasise the element of horror because fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions. Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected, so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or "outsideness" without laying stress on the emotion of fear. The reason why TIME plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe. CONFLICT WITH TIME seems to me the most potent and fruitful theme in all human expression.
HPL's greatest expression of this theme, "The Shadow Out of Time," is not in this volume. But some of his greatest weird fiction is. From the early works such as the amusing "The Statement of Randolph Carter" to the magnificent prose poem "Nyarlathotep" on to such masterpieces of cosmic horror such as "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Colour Out of Space," this collection contains some of the most amazing and successful horror/sf fiction even penned. "The Haunter of the Dark" remains my favorite tale by Lovecraft, a feast of suggestive Gothic weirdness that is terrifying and hypnotic. This is an excellent collection if you are reading H. P. Lovecraft for the first time.
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