Tales of H P Lovecraft

The Shadow over Lovecraft

On the front cover of this book there is a quote from Stephen King - ‘H.P.Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.’ I had read other praise for HP Lovecraft before and could not wait to get started on my first collection of tales from what I expected was one of the greatest horror writers ever to grace the earth. As I read the introduction I was even more intrigued and also because of the tragic circumstances of his life even more predisposed to like him. However, as I started to read the first tale I found myself being slightly disappointed. His work did not seem original to me - this is probably a by product of Lovecraft himself being heavily influenced by Edgar Allen Poe and every modern horror writer being influenced by both Lovecraft and Poe. I read on hoping that each story would be a little bit better than the last and still was disappointed.

Most of his stories are written in the first person, most our written as eyewitness accounts of the strange events that they themselves – the writers - have witnessed. This does give the reader a sense of realism but at times I believe Lovecraft goes too far in describing these events. Every creature, every nightmare vision is described down to the most intricate of details leaving nothing to the reader’s imagination. (Is it just me or should a pre-requisite for a horror writer not be to leave something to the imagination of the reader? As our imaginations can conjure up more enduring and sinister visions that a writer could not possible describe on paper.)

I feel I have been quite harsh towards Mr Lovecraft, although I do believe my criticisms are warranted, however, I am going to offer him some praise. The Call of Cthulhu gives life to the dreaded creature, Cthulhu a sleeping creature who sleeps the sleep of the dead in his nightmarish domain. He is the High Priest of the ‘Great Old Ones’ a race of people that inhabited this earth before we humans evolved. We are warned in this story and in many of Lovecraft’s other stories that ‘The Great Ones’ will return and displace mankind forever. This story shows excellent promise and would have been the basis of a great novel had Lovecraft gained the respect of his peers during his lifetime maybe he would have delighted even me, a Lovecraft sceptic, with more tales of Cthulhu.



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