Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'The Full H.P. Lovecraft Experience!', October 14, 2002
Despite reading 'The Mountains of Madness'; 'The Tomb'; and particularly 'Pickman's Model' in a brightly lit, populated main hall of the Boston Public Library in mid-day, I was still creeped out of my skin by the writing skill of this author - thus I became an H.P. Lovecraft advocate! But I wanted more. I wanted the full H.P. Lovecraft experience!
I decided to read 'THE LURKING FEAR And Other Stories' (c.1939, 1985) by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, overnight in the small graveyard on K & E. 5th streets, adjacent to the grade school I attended as a kid. So with book under arm, I left my local watering hole at last call and walked down a dark street, took a left, and stood in front of the small 1840s graveyard "where deformed trees tossed insane branches as their roots displaced unhallowed slabs and sucked venom from what lay below". Yup, this will do nicely.
So I hopped the low black wrought-iron spiked fence, sat down near a street light, coupled with a bright beacon October moon which casted "charonian shadows athwart the low mounds that dotted and streaked the region". I sat on a grave and leaned against a chipped and cracked slate headstone, and in this very un-library like atmosphere, began to read THE LURKING FEAR.
I sat comfortably "where the thick weeds grew and cast queer shadows in the light" and suddenly saw a rat run across a nearby grave. Uh, no problem, since rats are as common as seagulls in Boston; I finished part-one of THE LURKING FEAR in dark and shadow, when I suddenly jolted an inch off the grave recoiling my hand like lightning "for it was out of a phantasmal chaos that my mind leaped when the night grew hideous with shrieks beyond anything in my former experience or imagination."
The wind had blown a wet leaf on my hand in the dark and I yelped like a puppy. I resumed reading THE LURKING FEAR after my tachycardia and hyperventilation had subsided. The streetlight went out for some unknown reason and I was forced to finish THE LURKING FEAR, appropriately, by moonlight.
H.P. Lovecraft was criticized for a wordy adjectival writing style which his proponents, including myself, admired for setting 'atmosphere' to his storytelling. His use of the first person narrative only added to the distance of the author from the reader, so the reader would feel absolutely connected with the characters in the story, and, through analogy, feel the terror they experienced. Other writers of horror, particularly the very ineffective Stephen King, have not mastered atmospheric writing. In THE LURKING FEAR the author conveyed this sense of connection as he brought the reader, through the narrative of his nameless investigator, to Tempest Mountain, then inside the Martense Mansion and in the graves and tunnels of the elusive inhuman quarry.
So by the time I finished reading THE LURKING FEAR in this neglected neighborhood graveyard, the author had done his stuff and I was covered in a cold sweat from head to toe. My hands were clammy, unusually white and waxlike, and strangely still as H.P. Lovecraft finished the story describing the multitude of ape-like things which swarmed out of the tunnels near Martense mansion as "the ultimae product of mammalian degeneration; the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication, and cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; the embodiment of all the snarling chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life". This last exposition of H.P. Lovecraft in THE LURKING FEAR suddenly made me curious of the name on the headstone I was leaning. It was my name!
They found my body in the morning: I had received the full H.P. Lovecraft experience.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
the right stuff, a poor container, February 16, 2002
I Happen to own this volume and this is a tribute to how young, ignorant and tastelesse I was at the time.It is part of a set of five. These are poorly edited, and ill printed on crummy paper. Additionally, the collection happens to have a number of stories that are printed twice, and to omit several of HPL's not so minor stories. A publisher who gives this kind of treatment to a writer and to his customers doesn't deserve your money.If you like HPL, or just want to discover his works, do yourself and the publishing industry a favor, get your book somewhere else, there are some better collections and omnibuses around waiting for the more discriminating reader
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lovecraft is an important writer, November 3, 1999
By A Customer
And this collection of short stories contains some real gems. It's important to realize that it can be awfully hard to read more than a couple Lovecraft stories together in a row because it can feel really overly portentious as a collection-- indescribable horror and beauty on every page. However, taken separately, these stories are all first class reads.
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