| |||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Interesting Volume,
By
This review is from: The Shuttered Room & Other Pieces (Hardcover)
The contents of the book are:Forward, by August Derleth The Shuttered Room, by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth The Fisherman of Falcon Point, by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth Juvenilia and Early Tales (The Little Glass Bottle, The Secret Cave, The Mystery of the Grave-Yard, The Mysterious Ship, The Alchemist, Poetry and the Gods [with Anna Helen Crofts], The Street), by H. P. Lovecraft Old Bugs, by H. P. Lovecraft Idealism and Materialism: A Reflection, by H. P. Lovecraft The Commonplace Book of H. P. Lovecraft, annotated by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei Lovecraft in Providence, by Donald Wandrei Lovecraft as Mentor, by August Derleth Out of the Ivory Tower, by Robert Bloch Three Hours with H. P. Lovecraft, by Dorothy C, Walter Memories of a Friendship, by Alfred Galpin Homage to H. P. Lovecraft, by Felix Stefanile H. P. L., by Clark Ashton Smith Lines to H. P. Lovecraft, by Joseph Payne Brennan Revenants, by August Derleth The Barlow Tributes, by R. H. Barlow H. P. Lovecraft: The Books, by Lin Carter H. P. Lovecraft: The Gods, by Lin Carter Addendum: Some Observations on the Carter Glossary, by T. G. L. Cockcroft Notes on the Cthulhu Mythos, by George T. Wetzel Lovecraft's First Book, by William L Crawford Dagon, by H. P. Lovecraft The Strange High House in the Mist, by H. P. Lovecraft The Outsider, by H. P. Lovecraft From S. T. Joshi's "Notes" in SIXTY YEARS OF ARKHAM HOUSE: The third Lovecraft miscellany volume, following MARGINALIA and SOMETHING ABOUT CATS, this one having the smallest proportion of material by Lovecraft of the three but still containing an abundance of interesting matter. Of the "juvenilia and early tales," the first four tales were written between 1897 and 1902; "The Alchemist" in 1908; "Poetry and the Gods" in 1920 (in collaboration with Anna Helen Crofts, an amateur writer of whom little is known); and "The Street" in 1919. The text of the commonplace book as published here is textually quite unsound; for the best text, see David E. Schultz's annotated edition (Necronomicon Press, 1987). Of the memoirs, perhaps the most substantial are those by Bloch, Walter, and Galpin; Wandrei's tends to repeat much of what he had said in his MARGINALIA memoir. Stefanile, Smith, Brennan, Derleth, and Barlow contribute moving poetic tributes. Carter's essays are full of interesting information, if sprinkled with errors, only some of which are corrected by Cockcroft. Wetzel's essay on the "Cthulhu Mythos was further revised for the booklet HPL, ed. Meade and Penny Frierson (1972). There was probably a time, when I first became an obsess'd Cthulhu Mythos fan in 1973, when I enjoyed the title story of this book. I emerged as a Lovecraftian right at the time, a few years following Derleth's death, when things began to change for the better, when scholars began to deeply investigate all aspects of Lovecraft's prose. Attacks on Derleth became more prevalent as more and more questions were raised about his rights to Lovecraft copyright, his interpretation of the Lovecraft Mythos, &c. I have now and then, over the past decades, come to Derleth's defense -- but I can in no way defend "The Shuttered Room" -- it is, quite frankly, an awful story. In this book, Derleth has reprinted Lovecraft's Commonplace Book, and Derleth has added notes indicating what segments of that work were used to inspire his posthumous collaborations. I can find no notation mentioning an entry that inspir'd Derleth to pen "The Shuttered Room." The story is so confused. Beside being a blatant ripoff of "The Dunwich Horror," Augie also ties the tale to "The Shadow over Innsmouth." The ridiculous idea of a tiny frog-like creature that escapes and grows to human size the more it eats of cows and humans is a bad idea poorly handled. There is no atmosphere in this story and utterly no originality. Derleth is almost always a competent writer, but the writing here seems quite uninspired.That this pathetic tale should be the title piece of an Arkham House book in their H. P. Lovecraft line just makes me moan. The story is so uninspir'd that even Richard Taylor could not come up with an interesting image for the jacket. And so much could have been done with the idea, if Derleth had kept the tale devoted to the town of Dunwich and the inheritance of evil bequeathed to the Whateley's, rather than bringing in Innsmouth, the Marsh clan, the Deep Ones, &c &c. The book as a whole is quite enjoyable; devotees of that Derleth invention, the Cthulhu Mythos, are offer'd quite a lot within its covers.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Batrachian Horrors in the Olde Mill,
By Perhaps the first thing to remember about _The Shuttered Room & Other Pieces_ (1959) is that it is more a book _about_ Lovecraft than it is a book _by_ Lovecraft. There are only three honest-to-goodness published stories by Lovecraft: "Dagon," "The Strange High House in the Mist," and "The Outsider"-- all running to about 23 pages out of a total of 313. Well then, what is going on in those 290 other pages? There are some really awful juvenelia and early tales by Lovecraft about pirates and such, a previously unpublished piece of whimsy titled "Old Bugs" (also awful), and an essay on idealism and materialism in which Lovecraft comes down on the side of the materialists. Much more interesting is Lovecraft's Commonplace Book, loaded with dream imagery, quotations, and brief story ideas. Here is one that Lovecraft says in a later note was used in 1935 for "The Shadow Out of Time": In an ancient buried city a man finds a mouldering prehistoric document _in English in his own handwriting_ telling an incredible tale. Voyage from present into past implied. Possible actualization of this. (112) Another note about a Salem Witch who has "sundry terrible things" found in her house "after her death" (106) is the suggested source for "Dreams of the Witch House". Still another note about an evil Siamese twin (108) was passed on to Henry S. Whitehead, who used it in a novella of his own. Most notes are not connected with any particular tale. Here is one: "Horrible boarding house--closed door never opened... Strange occurances; sound of lapping of waves" (106). Here is another: "Desert of rock-- prehistoric door in cliff, in the valley around which lie the bones of uncounted billions of animals both modern and prehistoric, some of them puzzlingly gnawed" (112). On page 103, we find this note: "Fisherman casts his net into the sea. What he finds". This is cited as the germ of the "posthumous collaboration" with August Derleth, "The Fisherman of Falcon Point". On page 107, here is another: "Something seen at oriel window in ancient manor house". Surely this was the root of Derleth's "The Gable Window". Derleth was sternly criticized by Fritz Leiber, S.T. Joshi, and others for billing some of his stories as posthumous collaborations with Lovecraft when in fact Lovecraft's contribution to the story was often no more than a sentence or two from his Commonplace Book. There are two such "collaborations" in this book--really Lovecraft pastiches written by Derleth. They are "The Shuttered Room" and "The Fisherman of Falcon Point". "The Shuttered Room" runs on far too long to a predictable ending. But "The Fisherman..." is effectively compact and haunting. There remain tributes to Lovecraft by "divers hands". Some are critical, some are biographical, and a few are poetic. Of the poems, the best is a short, tight gem by Joseph Payne Brennan that was first published in _Macabre_, a magazine that Brennan founded to take up the traditions of _Weird Tales_. The worst are the lengthly tributes by Robert Barlow that were found in his papers after his death. There are a couple of essays by Lin Carter that tell me more about the books and the gods in Lovecraft's stories than I want to know about. There are essays by Donald Wandrei, August Derleth, and Robert Bloch-- all members of the Lovecraft Circle. And yet, you know, some of the more interesting pieces were by lesser known figures. William L. Crawford tells of the effort to publish Lovecraft's first book, _The Shadow Over Innsmouth_ (1936) and of its commercial failure. Dorothy C. Walter recounts an interview that she had with Lovecraft. And Alfred Galpin gives a personal memoir. He says that Lovecraft eventually sensed that he was disappointed in his adjective-laden style and allowed him to drift away. Galpin confesses that he destroyed some of Lovecraft's letters to him. My admiration for Lovecraft's fiction and poetry is restrained. And yet I think that I would have liked to know him-- to walk with him while he befriended horses and cats in the streets of Providence, to eat Boston baked beans and ice cream with him, or to talk with him about Dr. Johnson and Bishop Berkeley. Perhaps he would even have talked about the dreaded _Necronomicon_. But I suspect that he would not have done so in a very serious manner.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
