H.P. Lovecraft
 

So for about the last two years, I've been reading just about everything of his I can get my hands on. I've finished probably about two-dozen of his stories, including some of the larger ones like "The Shadow Out of Time" and "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath".

I've read a bunch of his Cthulhu stories, in addition to a dozen or so of his "Dream Cycle" material. I can definitely say, I don't share Lovecraft's infatuation with dreams and whatnot (good stories they may be), but his Cthulhu works are some of the best fiction I've ever read. He's quickly become my absolute favorite author.

Has anybody else read any of his works at length?

I was recently thinking about how I'd love to have a book with me everywhere I go, but I don't have that many I want to read. I'll most definately check these out. Where should I start?

I just finished Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time, amazing book, that guy is incredible. My next book will be "Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar" suggested by my Philosophy teacher(I'm majoring in Philosophy.)

Del Rey actually has a good set of three books which comprise just about all of his stories. If you head to Barnes & Noble, I'm sure they'll have a few in stock.

I'd start with The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. It's got quite a few of what I'd consider his best stories: The Call of Cthulhu, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shadow over Innsmouth and so on.

The second one I picked up was The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death. It contains the majority of his "dream cycle" stories, including two of his longest works, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

The third book has a lot of his less Cthulhu-inspired stories and poetry, but it also contains the third-longest work of his, At the Mountains of Madness.

Like I said, I'd start with Bloodcurdling Tales.... The Call of Cthulhu is possibly my favorite story ever. His use of grammar and vocabulary in that one is just incredible, and the whole story just has this uniquely eerie atmosphere you won't find anywhere else. I'd recommend just jumping right to it. Start off on the best foot possible.

Haha, there was a poll on slashdot about who everyones' favorite political candidate was or something like that and Cthulhu was a choice.

Never read them, but I've heard quite a bit about them from the members on a SFF forum I'm active on. I'm thinking of buying as many of his books as I can when I've got the money.

Oh, and this might interest you - someone's making a film about Lovecraft called Cthulhu. There's also a J. J. Abrams film with the project name Cloverfield coming out in January that is rumoured to be about the awakening of Great Cthulhu.

http://cthulhuthemovie.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloverfield

Interesting movies. I might have to watch them.

I haven't actually gotten my hands on any of the books yet, but after having heard tons about them I've been meaning to go look at the library.

Cthulhu looks terrible, Lenny. I watched the trailer maybe a year ago, and it just looks kinda dull.

Cloverfield looks fucking amazing, and I would DIE if it turned out to be a Cthulhu movie, but the chances of that are just about zero. Nobody wants to make a Lovecraft film, and most of the fanbase doesn't want to see a Lovecraft film.

The reason is inherent in the very nature of his stories. If the things he writes about are so unimaginable, so groutesque, so weird and irrational, how do you re-create them in a visual medium and do them justice? Cthulhu himself is supposed to be capable of driving men insane just because of the way he looks. That would take a superhuman feat of visual creative genius, to concieve and reproduce the inconcievable. That's like inventing a color nobody's seen before.

In other words, a movie would be hard-pressed to ever truly do Cthulhu justice. Sure, you could stick a colossal, squid-faced, dragon-winged monstrosity into your movie, but it would always be just a little bit less grand and horrible than any given Lovecraft fan has imagined.

Cloverfield's creators were handing out t-shirts with the name "Sluggo" on them. What the fuck?

I think I agree with you on both films. To me, Cthulhu looks like a generic lad-goes-back-home-finds-problem-sorts-it-out film.

Cloverfield does look brilliant. Especially after seeing the trailer - starts off as a home video of a leaving party for some fella. Ends with the head of the Statue of Liberty smashing into the street in front of the apartment.

"Slusho", not "Sluggo". It's because the director was the guy who created and directed the TV show Alias, and Slusho is a some sort of fictional consumer product that shows up a lot in the series. Slusho is one of the codenames for the project, alongside "Cloverfield".

Oh yea, Slusho. Either way it's a pretty weird name x_X.

I just picked up a collection at Borders before work yesterday, and just started reading it, the title being The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. They're pretty good so far, though I've only read a few short stories so far. He seems to have an infatuation with the idea of insanity, which I gather came from the fact that his father had gone insane.

I do like how he doesn't really describe the horrors witnessed by characters, leaving them mostly to the readers' imagination.

I'm enjoying myself so far, can't wait until I can hit some of the famous Cthulhu stories. :)

I'm lazy. I want the gruesome tidbits!

It's kinda hard to post tidbits of short stories without making them completely worthless.

What have you read so far, Volls?

Probably his most widely-recognized "Cthulhu" stories are:

The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Shadow over Innsmouth
The Haunter of the Dark
The Shadow Out of Time
At the Mountains of Madness

You could technically file a lot more of his works under the Cthulhu category, but the ones I listed are the stories that most-heavily incorporate the core values of the Mythos.

Other stories like "The Dreams in the Witch House", "From Beyond", "The Colour Out of Space" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" incorporate many of the core values of the Cthulhu Mythos. But, at the same time, most of them also draw heavily on Lovecraft's obsession with the nature and potency of dreams, and could also fit into his "Dream Cycle" category.

In general, just read all of it. You'll find your favorites, and it's all really thought-provoking stuff.

I think this collection went chronologically but here's what I've read so far:

Dagon
The Statement of Randolph Carter
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
Celephais
Nyarlathotep
The Picture in the House
The Outsider
Herbert West - Reanimator
The Hound
The Rats in the Walls
The Festival
He
Cool Air
The Call of Cthulhu


The stories I'll likely read tonight are:
The Colour Out of Space
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Haunter of the Dark


Looks like I'll have to go pick up some other books, but I love most of these stories so far. My only problem with them is that they're fairly predictable, but I suspect that's more the fault of our time (being intimiately familiar with his subject matter) than it is his style of writing. Most of these are at least ~75 years old, so...

Forgive the double post, but this is relevant enough to anyone interested that it should pop up in peoples' 'New Posts'. :)

http://www.tmoct.co.uk/lovecraftlibrary.html

A collection of H.P. Lovecrafts short-stories online, free and there are actually quite a lot of them.

Enjoy!!

You need to get your mind out of the framework that there needs to be a twist, or suprise ending, Volls. It's more about the grammar and atmosphere than it is the actual events taking place. You're right that some of the surprises at the end of these stories are easy to guess, but it's not really about that. It's more about changing the way you percieve reality around you.

As I said before, Call of Cthulhu is my favorite of his works. The first paragraph is one of the most finely-written pieces of literature in history, in my opinion. Whisperer in Darkness and Haunter of the Dark both gave me the willies. That's a hefty number of pages you're planning on reading tonight. Hope you enjoy it!

I decided against reading them at work since it takes more mental presence than I can give to read his works appropriately, so we'll see if I read them later.

Regarding his style, most of his stories thus far have been vague and left his horrifying revelation for the last few paragraphs. Since I'm a fantasy nut and such, it's just never a revelation for me, since I'd guessed from clues halfway through the piece. Like I said, I think it's just a problem with me and our times, since we're much more educated in regards to his subject matter. It's not a true complaint against him, more like a complaint that I'm robbed of the full effect by knowing so much. :p

The writing is superb though, that's for sure. You really need to have a quiet location to read and absorb it, or you really miss out on a lot. :(