The Dreams in the Witch House: And Other Weird Stories (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale. -- Stephen King

Review

H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale. (Stephen King)

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (September 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142437956
• ISBN-13: 978-0142437957
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #187,994 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Third Collection, October 20, 2004

By	Nick (Switzerland) - See all my reviews

Having read the two previous collections it was a logical step to go on and get the third (and apparently final)one. So what to expect with this book? Some really good stuff and some really bad stuff (my opinion).

Various kinds of stories are gathered here, as was the case with the previous publications by Penguin; that is, there are some "macabre tales", "dreams and fantasies tales" and some "Great Old Ones tales".

"Polaris", the first story, really gave me a bad impression. It's a short piece but its worthiness is just as short. The second tale is not great either. Fortunately this goes up with the third "The Terrible Old Man," though it's nothing properly astounding.

One of the biggest stories in this collection (100 pages or so), namely "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" is the only Lovecraft story I did not finish after having started it. But this one is just too much. It's a dream tale, lots of beautiful imagery with flowery descriptions, weird names of people and towns and god knows what else, etc... etc... The problem is that its length is way too much for a tale of that kind. The fact that it's all a dream completely kills any kind of suspence or tension or expections: in a world where cats can jump off roofs to go behind the moon to gather is a world where you expect absolutely anything. And that's where the weak spot is. If anything can happen then you're just expecting anything and whatever happens is not surprising. So that is not your usual Lovecraft story; but I expect some readers may like that kind of thing; it's not bad it's just so incredibly long that in the end the potential power of such a tale is flattened entirely because of its unfit length and crowding stuff. I only read half of it but after that my interest was so lacking that I just found it useless to go, besides I had lost the thread of what was going on.

I would say this collection is slightly weaker than the two first ones. It's still worth getting if you like Lovecraft. I was just a bit disappointed by some stories in there that are really weak. Yet there are also some good surprises: "The Nameless City", a kind of pre-At the Mountains of Madness is a very interesting story; "In the Vault", however simple and classical it is, still is a pretty good tale.

I'd recommend you check out "The Call of Cthulhu" if you have never read any Lovecraft before and are interested in doing so. Otherwise this book is worth getting (even if some tales do suck).

PS: the footnotes and individual presentations on each story is as always very interesting and informative.

11 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Key-Stone of Lovecraft's Oeuvre, or: Illusions Shattered, September 25, 2006

By	Ian Vance (pagosa springs CO.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While reading the penguin omnibus *The Call of Cthulhu* a few years back - my first foray into the Cyclopedean mnemonic-Coliseum of H. P. Lovecraft's oeuvre - it felt as if I were perusing fragments of a much larger cosmology, hinted glimpses of nightmarish mythology, an intuition given credence by the continual reference in the footnotes to other stories, most notably `The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.' As Lovecraft's work is usually self-contained, I continued through that first volume and the follow-up, *The Thing on the Doorstep*, and the gaps in my conception began to slowly and surely bridge together, fashioning an overall portrait of cosmic horror and lurking fear, gallows-humor and existential doom, all woven together by Lovecraft's gloriously-florid prose. Yet it wasn't until I held this volume, *The Dreams in the Witch House,* that I realized here was compiled at last the keystone and map to the underpinnings of the Cthulhu Mythos... and I recall, upon reading the first half-dozen stories, a sense of irritation, having just completed the Conan stores by Lovecraft's contemporary Robert E. Howard, recently published in their original forms and chronological order; why, I wondered, with the numerous printings of Lovecraft's horror throughout the decades, had a similar treatment not been done? *Dreams in the Witch House* spans the creative arch from the halcyon-phase of 1919 to very near the end, Lovecraft's second-to-last story `The Shadow Out of Time' (1935). I surmised that if Penguin and the editor S. T. Joshi had compiled Lovecraft's oeuvre in a chronological fashion, then all that mystery, all that tension-filled `unknown' from the first and second volume, could have been expanded, given a richer foundation.

Not until I delved deeper into this third (and, I presume, last) Penguin edition that the slow realization as to the particular compilation came forth. *Dreams in the Witch House* is unlike its predecessors in several ways, most notably that it contains the bulk of Lovecraft's more fantastical stories, `tone poems' of a mythology that expanded over the course of a pulp-fiction career, with the style differing from the `standard Lovecraft' treatment - in that, a first person narrative of mortal man stumbling upon the secrets to a vaster and inhumanly horrific universe, and the consequences that ensue from these visions of the Void. Although these `standard' stories filter throughout *Dreams in the Witch House*, around half the book is devoted to the more fantastic imagery inspired by the work of Lord Dunsany, and even the regular stories contain hints or progress themes from this concentrated legendry.

Therein lay the quandary, at least for this reader. Lovecraft's gift for horror lay in his hinting at the hideous and horrific, a struggling-obtuse framework for that beyond human conception; due to the writer's refined technique, this usually imparted both a growing tension and curiosity as to the mystery presented. Even when maddeningly diffuse, Lovecraft managed to reveal just enough to satisfy and stimulate, to give shape in the reader's head of the daemonic reality, despite his protagonist's oft-whimpered reluctance to reveal concise detail. That was Lovecraft's genius - in showing not enough, but just the right amount - a literary technique by and large failed by his predecessors and that, in this day and age of shock n' draung, seems downright antiquated. Yet for me it is the hint that haunts the most, as I find most modern horror with non-psychological basis a paltry swine-trough for necronerds and the emotionally stunted, a tawdry romp within the confines of Western culture's death-fixation through violence and adolescent revenge wish-fulfillment (the slasher/gore genre in general).

So - with the revelations of this volume - a mythology that grows through `The Doom that Came to Sarnath', `The Cats of Ulthar,' `The Nameless City', `The Unnamable' - and culminates with `The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' - I found the magic dissipated with revelation, the climax of so much sinister suggestion found somewhat lacking in a mythos-construct eerily resembling a macabre Oz. Not to say I didn't enjoy `Dream-Quest' or its related stories in this realm-within-a-realm; I generally enjoyed every story of the three Penguin collections, ever-stirred by Lovecraft's prose and resultant imagery. This was simply a case of shattered illusions, the Pandora's Box opened to personal regret

It came clear by the end of *Dreams in the Witch House* that this collection contained a stronger thematic development than the previous two compilations, with the developmental flow between `Unknown Kadath', `The Silver Key' and the inferior follow-up `Through the Gates of the Silver Key' into `The Shadow Out of Time' - with nearly ten years separating this last from the former entries - giving a sense of apotheosis to Lovecraft's `Cluthu Mythos'. And it is this final story that, for me, seems to represent the absolute best of the author's work. Although the structure is very similar to `At the Mountains of Madness,' the concluding novella `The Shadow Out of Time' begins with an overview of the dimensional / space-time theme and progresses into an evocative yarn of alien-haunted beauty, disturbing in a sense that few of Lovecraft's tales managed to impart on this reader.

At last I understood Joshi & Penguin's intent in combining the more mythical and fantastic elements of Lovecraft's work into a concluding volume. Although the first two compilations can be considered more necessary in terms of story-craft and classical status, *The Dreams in the Witch House* nicely dovetails these two volumes and, in its own way, explains all. Venture with caution, however, lest you wish those illusions - of fitful mortal explorations into alien cosmology, of the delight in the horror of the unknown - revealed and subsequently shattered.

Also, a note: the cover is similar yet different than that presented above. Curious...