Customer Reviews

dagon, and other macabre tales

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In my humble opinion, there are two ways to read Lovecraft. The first, and best, is to get your hands on an original "Wierd Tales" or other pulp. There is something about the musty smell that adds to the tale. For true conisours, read them under the covers with a flashlight, late in the evening hours.

Realizing that original pulps may be prohibitively expensive, the Arkham House Editions are the next option. These hardback treasures are as much a part of Lovecraft's legacy as the stories themselves. Lovecraft would be all but forgotten if it were not for the small circle of friends who founded Arkham House, with the sole mission of keeping his writings in print. Arkham House is the definitive Lovecraft volume.

The stories in "Dagon and Other MacAbre Tales" are classics, including "Herbert West Re-Animator," "The Doom That Came to Sarnath," "The Strange High House in the Mist," "The Cats of Ulthar ," "Dagon," "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family ," "The Lurking Fear ," "The Transition of Juan Romero ," and his acclaimed essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature [revised] ."

This book contains such greats as Herbert West - Re-animator, and The Strange Case of Arthur Jemyem and his Family. The Arkham House editions are the definitive Lovecraft Library. A definite must have.

This collection of work ranks as my second favorite, falling just short of "At the Mountains of Madness" also published by Arkham house. It contains most of his earlier works, and does a better job providing the reader with a glimpse of the forces which shaped his work through the years than any other collection could hope to. If you are new to Lovecraft, these works would probably not be appreciated as much as others. They are much more enjoyable when one has a better understanding of what Lovecraft is all about. I would suggest starting with the collection "The Dunwich Horror and Others" also by Arkham house. It contains most of Lovecraft's most popular work, including "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Colour out of Space". For any fan or collecter of Lovecraft, however, this book is an absolute must have.

Of the three Arkham House HPL hardbacks, this one contains the largest percentage of Lovecraft's traditional style horror stories, and the lowest percentage of his hard SF influenced works. If you feel that Horror has long run out of new things to say about vampires, werewolves, mummies and ghosts, this is the Arkham House volume that will confirm it, as you will read H P Lovecraft at his most imitative, when he was still most inspired by Poe, Dunsany and Machen, and when he was still trying to come up with something new based on spiritual possession, vaguely described remnants of departed beings mystically draining life energy, and other such classic horror concepts. Some of these are pretty good stories, and a few are first rate, but this is the volume I loan friends who already have read "The Shadow out of Time", "At the Mountains of Madness" and "Call of Cthulhu", not the one for friends who are just starting to read H. P. Lovecraft.
In particular, there's several of HPL's 'family line with some sort of degeneration going on' or 'racial mixture leads to subhuman icky thing worskip' stories here - at the very least, Arthur Jermyn. The Lurking Fear, Red Hook, The Descendent, The Thing in the Moonlight and The Festival all have a strong tie to these themes, and there's some of them in Herbert West - Reanimator and maybe Dagon. The other books in the set have some of this - i.e. 'Rats in the Walls' or "The Dunwich Horror", but here it's a concentrated dose, so much so that it becomes hard to read the book straight through.

(Caution -- May Contain Eldritch Spoilers!)

Why the shoggoth did they replace those wonderful Raymond Bayless jacket illustrations with these wretchedly AWFUL cartoony awful covers that are an insult to the Master of Cosmic Horror! Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Of course, the perfect cover image for a book of H. P. Lovecraft's tales is a photo of HPL himself. Just take a look at the cover of LORD OF A VISIBLE WORLD--AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN LETTERS and you'll see I'm right. This new cover drawing of what I guess is supposed to be a Deep One is so stupid -- almost as bad as the cover he drew for the Arkham House reprinting of AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS with its depiction of CHARLES DEXTER WARD that looks like it's the work of a talentless comic book illustrator. Bloody wretched.

But let us not judge a book by its pathetic cover.

The frontispiece is a charming photograph of a young Howard Phillips Lovecraft, looking very studious with his wire-rim spectacles. My hero, the indefatigable S. T. Joshi (his new exhaustive bibliography of Lovecraft has just been publish'd), supplies a Note on the Texts, explaining some of what he went through to bring us the texts as Lovecraft wanted them to be publish'd, as HPL wrote to the first editor of WEIRD TALES, Edwin F. Baird, "Should any miracle impel you to consider the publication of my tales, I have but one condition to offer; and that is that no excisions be made. If the tale cannot be printed as it is written, down to the very last semicolon and comma, it must gracefully accept rejection." Editor Joshi, with his laboring at restoring the Correct Texts, has given us all of those commas and semicolons. T. E. D. Klein's introduction, "A Dreamer's Tales," was written especially for this Arkham House volume. Klein is, of course, the author of some of the finest weird tales ever written, and is the author of what is perhaps my favorite Lovecraftian tale not written by HPL -- "Black Man with a Horn." His introduction reveals his intimate knowledge of Lovecraft's Life and his enchantment with HPL's Works.

Ah -- those Works! How oft I have perus'd them; & how singularly they have stain'd mine own dreams. Each tales is a unique thing in and of itself; & although Lovecraft may have repeated themes & enlarged on concepts (i.e., "The Call of Cthulhu" may be an enlargement of this collection's title story), each of his tales is a thing in and of itself. Each has its own unique character and charm and chill. The opening tale, "The Tomb," in unlike any of the others; it has conviction in its narrative & mystery at its climax. "Dagon" is a very strange tale, and I have always found it's ending rather confusing. Was it all a dream, a fever of madness?

"The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, THAT HAND! The window! The window!"

As S. T. writes, "One critical issue is the very end of the tale: what, if anything, does the narrator see? Has the monster who made obeisances to the monolith come to pursue him? The idea that such a monster could walk down the streets of San Francisco and somehow know where the narrator is must surely be regarded as utterly preposterous; and yet, some readers evidently believe that the narrator's vision is genuine. But we are surely to understand that the narrator is hallucinating here. Passages from two letters may lend support to this view. In August 1917, a month after writing the story, he wrote: 'Both ["The Tomb" and "Dagon"] are anylyses of strange monomania, involving hallucinations of the most hideous sort.' . . . In 1930 Lovecraft wrote, 'In "Dagon" I shewed a horror that MAY APPEAR, but that has not yet made any effort to do so.'"

I confess that I have little patience with people who want weird phantasy fiction to make sense in a realistic way. Horror fiction shews us an alternative to mundane reality, to every day sanity.

The tales in this book range from those in the tradition of Dunsany to the bald horror of "Herbert West--Reanimator." Many of these stories are consider'd "minor" tales by Lovecraft -- but many of them contain eerie scenes, strangely beguiling settings, and deliciously queer emotions. They are early works, yes, but they show lively imagination and budding talent that would blossom into the great late stories. Many of these tales are among my all-time favorite: "The Nameless City" (1921), ""The Hound" (1922), "The Unnamable" (1923), "The Festival" (1923) and "He" (1925) are stories that I have read repeatedly, and always with great pleasure; & they have inspir'd many of my own weird tales.

As an added bonus, this book includes Lovecraft's magnificent essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature," and S. T. has added an index to it. For those reading Lovecraft for the first time, this book is a great place to start -- for it gives you the great variety of macabre fiction which has come to be known as Lovecraftian.

The 4 volumes in this series are the best way I know of to experience all of H.P.L.'s stories.

This is one of the five volumes that any Lovecraft fan MUST have in his or her collection.

The Library of America's Lovecraft collection contains all of the classic tales of Lovecraft's maturity. S. T. Joshi's exhaustive and elegant bio tells all you need to know and more about the man and his world. One of the volumes of Lovecraft's collaborations and revisions (i.e. THE LOVED DEAD AND OTHER REVISIONS) brings together that little-known but fascinating aspect of Lovecraft's career. And TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS brings together the best of the multi-faceted tales inspired by Lovecraft's creativity.

This volume is surely unsurpassed as a collection of Lovecraft's earlier tales--both his conventional "fright tales" and his apprentice "weird tales"--many of which appear to be influenced by one of Lovecraft's idols, Lord Dunsany.

And it includes his classic (and seminal) essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature." Nobody interested in Lovecraft or in weird fiction in general can afford not to have this essay in his or her library.

May this anthology always remain in print.

I loved this book. It actually made me afraid. Not of guns or violence, but of things that could really happen. This book toyed with my mind so much so that I couldn't read it at night. If you are into strange and wonderful writings then you should read this as an introduction to all of H.P. Lovecrafts other works. I am still afraid of boats and of other "un-namable things"

I highly recommend everything Lovecraft wrote. Few people are ever blessed with the talent for writing about the macabre and the fantastic. Lovecraft was the greatest. He explored the deepest secrets beneath and went to realms unfathomable. There will only be one H.P. Lovecraft and he should be acknowledged world-wide for his accomplishments. This book is one of three hardcovers that contain most, if not all, of his work. Turn out the lights and spark a flame while reading this one. Explore the unknown and dare places feared by man...