DEL REY ANTHOLOGY OF LOVECRAFT'S BEST

books:


	• The Road to Madness H. P. Lovecraft, John Jude Palencar, ... Del Rey, 1996 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Brilliant

The late Howard Phillip Lovecraft defined 20th Century Horror. The list of horror, fantasy, and science fiction authors that were influenced by him is enormous (Stephen King, Clive Barker, Neil Gaimon, George Romero, Dean Koontz, Robert Bloch and many mnay others) some of the earliest members of which were even directly aided by him(Bloch for example). As has been noted one of the few down sides to his work is that it was directly influenced by the era and location that he lived in(late 1800's through 1930's in Rhode Island) and shows a level of racism most modern people find distasteful.

Aside from that though his stories are first rate. In large part he is scary becuase his stories are direct reflections of his world view. To Lovecraft man kind was an absolutely insignifigant speck in a universe that frankly didn't care. He was absolutely a materialist which is why his monsters are aliens and other physical beings and his magic more of an alien science then some thing supernatural(incidentaly he was in the process of coauthoring a book denouncing the supernatural with the late Harry Houdini before the great magician died sadly only an outline remains).

Of his creations a few bear particular note in this collection. For one this includes Herbert West Reanimator the story that inspired the dreadful Reanimator movie. Any one who has ever seen this useless movie would be well served by reading the original story if only to see how much better the original tale was. Another enduring creation is of course the dreaded Necronomicon. A dreaded tome of black magic invented by the late author as a plot device that has since been ripped off by dozens of occultists hoping to make a quick buck. The last work I would specificly point out is "Imprisoned with the Pharophs" a tale he ghost wrote for Harry Houdini.

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In an Octopus's Garden

Literary theorists swear up and down to their youthful, naive charges that there are only three conflicts in fiction: Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Himself.

Providence recluse and Grandmaster of Horror H.P. Lovecraft, while proving handy at mastering all three of the aforementioned timeless old chestnuts, suggests there is a fourth category: Man versus Thing.

Any connoiseur of the frenzied scribblings of old Adbul Al-Hazred in the Necronomicon will find this second Del Rey collection indispensable as 1) a grimoire chock-full of searingly useful material on the recondite pursuits of those lovable, tentacled beings we know and love as the Elder Gods---mind your manners, sonny boy, they were devouring souls and mastering the Time-Space Quanitplex back when your ancestors were hobnobbing with euglena and paramecium; and 2)Scaring yourself silly.

Man versus Thing, indeed.

Lovecraft was a God among insects, a true literary Giant in the Earth, and the potent, vicious, soul-unhinging madness flowing from his deliciously warped mind is astonishing. Lovecraft took the great disillusionment that stemmed from the Great War and ratcheted it up to the next step, pounding the final nail in the coffin of scientific positivism, and his horror is Cosmic; therein lies his peculiar brilliance. Lovecraft is more than purpled prose and tentacles, in that he has created a world peopled with bloodless, bookish men of science and set them up against uncaring stellar horrors, leaving them with no appeal to God or Goodness. The crucifix won't help you against the horror bubbling out of *that* particular crypt, my good man!

In Lovecraftian fiction, Mankind thinks that by harnessing the marvels of science and high technology, He will improve himself and advance the cause and course of civilization.

Lovecraft knew better. In the Lovecraftian universe , Man is still a primitive, shambling neanderthal in trousers who lives in a dark, slimy, relatively unexplored cave. Science is a guttering tallow candle he holds before him in his trembling hand, throwing light on bulbous, slithering neighbors we had previously only dimly imagined.

And that's the *good* news. The bad news is that Man's newfound, eldritch buddies are now awfully interested in him. And hungry.

The supreme horror discovered by Lovecraftian heroes throughout the stories here---from the refugee from a German U-Boat in "The Temple", to the curious scholar who fumbles with a singularly wrong Device (shades of the Lament Configuration, possibly?), to the hapless spaceman trapped "In the Walls of Eryx"---all of them learn that Science is no friend, and Good and Evil are remote and relative terms on this tepid, livid blue-green orb hurled through cold and unblinkingly alien galaxies.

The stories collected in "The Road to Madness" offer a spyglass into Lovecraft's literary development, but that's less interesting than the gleefully ghoulish, elegant sliminess of some of the ghastly tales offered here like gemstones in the darkness: "Cool Air", "He" and "The Terrible Old Man" chronicle the dangers of befriending or robbing antique old gentlemen in Yankee alleys or Paris garrets; "The Unnameable" is a tasty little ghoul's kiss in a graveyard in which Lovecraft taunts the typical critical assessment of his prose style; "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" serves as a clever riff on the Strange Travelogue Tale, ghost-written for illusionist Harry Houdini.

But these tales, tasty as they are, are but molehills to the mountains offered up by the three jewels in this Lovecraftian crown. "At the Mountains of Madness" is surely Lovecraft's masterwork, chronicling forgotten horrors that threaten the sanity of an Arctic expedition---and possibly the world. "Herbert West: Re-animator" offers an epic account of what some good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity and a syringe of corpse-reviving re-agent can accomplish. "The Horror at Red Hook", a jaunt into some of Brooklyn's seamier quarters, advances a sound argument for urban renewal if ever there was one.

Road to madness? Quite possibly. Road to soul-crushing terror and tentacled nightmares? Absolutely. Enjoy.

JSG

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A must read for Halloween

Years ago I found a tattered old paperback of Lovecraft's work in a used book store. I took it with me up to my uncle's cabin in New Hampshire and, After everyone else had gone to bed, I stretched out on the couch, in a dimly lit room, with a deer's head hanging over me, and read The Lurking Fear. I was hooked, if not more than a little creeped out. Lovecraft's style has a slightly pulpy feel to it, and he frequently uses punch-line endings, but his mastery of atmosphere and mood, coupled with his skill with language, make his stories nothing less than genius. This volume offers a wonderful over view of his history and is certainly a great place to start on your exploration of his work. If you can get yourself to some secluded, and darkened room it will only further add to the effect, especially if there's a deer's head involved. Trust me.

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DEL REY ANTHOLOGY OF LOVECRAFT'S BEST

This is an anthology of some of the best works of Howard Philips Lovecraft (HPL), a pulp horror- and science fiction- writer of the 1920s and 30s. Lovecraft had a distinctive style of writing, meant to convey through description an atmosphere of awe and wonder of the universe, which he believed a rational mind would experience as horror. His works have influenced generations of writers including Stephen King, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, and Robert Howard. The content of THE ROAD TO MADNESS is some of HPLs most evocative, chilling, and enduring tales. And I almost missed them.

You see, I thought I had everything by Lovecraft. But I would catch allusions to things like the "Martense kin", "the U-Boat", and Arthur Jermyn. I couldn't find these references in any of my books, when I realized I was missing THE TOMB. Rather than buy this out-of-print book, I picked up ROAD TO MADNESS. It has served me well as a general collection of the most enduring elements of Lovecraft's fiction. The 3 Del Rey collections (ROAD TO MADNESS, BEST OF HP LOVECRAFT, DREAM CYCLE OF HP LOVECRAFT) are pretty comprehensive of HPLs corpus. I am posting below a list of the contents of THE ROAD TO MADNESS under the heading of other sources for the same stories, to let you decide how much overlap it has with other anthologies you might own.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS AND OTHER TALES
"At the Mountains of Madness "
"The Evil Clergyman"
"The Shunned House"

THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH
"The Crawling Chaos"
"The Festival"
"In the Walls of Eryx"
"memory"
"Nathicana"
"The Tomb"
"The Tree"
"Under The Pyramids"

THE LURKING FEAR AND OTHER STORIES
"Dagon"
"Arthur Jermyn"
"The Lurking Fear"
"The Moon-Bog"
"The Temple"
"The Unnameable"
"The White Ship"

THE TOMB AND OTHER TALES:
"The Alchemist"
"The Beast in the Cave"
"The Book"
"The Festival"
"He"
"The Horror at Red Hook"
"In the Walls of Eryx"
"Poetry and the Gods "
"The Street"
"The Tomb"
"The Transition of Juan Romero"
"Under the Pyramids"

[Possibly no other source]
"Cool Air"
"Herbert West, Reanimator"

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Masterful

I have thought long and hard of how I should contribute a review of The late Howard Philips' Lovecraft for fear that I would not do as good a job as the writer justly deserves. After reading not only what is considered his greatest stories, but a great many of his less famed ones as well, I think that finally I've found a means to give definition to the man's craft. In this review, I will speak of his writing in general, and not just the book above, which caters to a handful of his stories anyway.

Lovecraft's writing has been called fantastic and macabre, has been labeled under the categories of horror, fantasy and science fiction, and after reading most, if not all of his printed stories, I can honestly attest to the fact that all of these terms are true. However, they are not what people today might consider a true science fiction, fantasy or horror story. His science fictions are not set on a starship enterprise, or in the future where we war with other alien races over territories in space-instead, Lovecraft brings an alien germ to our planet, which can't be studied or compared with our own deadly germs since its properties are unknown, in which case, we can do nothing but hope it goes away before it kills us all, or...he brings to us an alien race that has dwelt secretly among us in order to conduct bizarre and often gruesome experiments with our bodies.

His fantasies are not set in any imaginary world like in Lord of the Rings. Pretty much all his stories start off with a good foot in reality, leaving little room for fantasy. In fact, the fantasy doesn't come into play until the very end of each story-until the very last few chapters, and sometimes, until the very last few paragraphs.

For me, I feel the most dominant element here is horror. Lovecraft often makes much emphases on secret occults, that no neo-pagan would appreciate, which are often described as evil and sacrifice both animals and children to their evil Gods. The man, or main character, who for some reason feels he needs to unearth these cults-almost always finds himself on the brink of insanity-if not completely insane-by the time he discovers the things these secretive people worshipped are not as fabled as he originally thought. Even in Lovecraft's fantasy stories, the protagonist always meets with sudden and unexpected shock after discovering the many worlds which converge with ours-often ending up dead or in a state of maniacal laughter which later gets him thrown into a sanatorium. So, no matter what genre a Lovecraft story may seem to embrace, all embrace some aspect of horror.

I would also like to state that the writing itself-although very well done-is not what we have grown accustomed to in our modern age where writers are forced to get to the point as quickly as possible. Lovecraft's old style of writing almost always covers the character's professional background, (there wasn't any attempt to bring emotional involvement between reader and character from what I can recall) before actually getting to the story. And when the story finally begins, he tediously lays down fact after fact as a mystrey slowly unravels before the story starts to really kick in. Like I've already mentioned, the fantasy doesn't come into play until the very end of each story. There is also little to no dialog in most of his stories, which was typical for his time. And the writing itself described no action-it's all pretty much telling. This, to some, may seem to drag. Some may also find his writing far fetched. I'll give an example here, from this small piece which for some reason I grew fond of, from his story, `Shadow Out of Space':

"Primal myth and modern illusion joined in their assumption that mankind is only one-if not least-of the highly evolved and dominant races of this planet's long and largely unknown career. Things of inconceivable shape, they implied, had reared towers to the sky and delved into every secret of nature before the first amphibian forbear of man had crawled out of the hot sea three hundred million years ago."

And it's not just this one piece-the whole of all his stories are like this, and it's true some people will not much care for his style of writing. It is not what we are use to.

Lovecraft has spent countless hours during his lifetime motivating young amateur writers who found inspiration in his work. He has even developed a literary cult which still exists today (and they have no shame calling themselves just that) which use his mythological monstrosities to create a foundation for their own stories. (Lovecraft encouraged this). Somehow, and this one is beyond me, even a card game was developed based on his monsters, as well as a few PC games. And here and there, throughout other fictions, I can't help but notice the similarities between his fiction and the fiction of today's writers.

If you wish to own a large and fulfilling collection of his works, these are my three recommendations: "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and The Macabre", "The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death", and, "The Transition of H.P. Lovecraft: The Road to Madness." Each of these contain several of his stories, including all his best, some of which were turned into movies such as, `The Dunwich Horror,' `The Shadow Over Innsmouth,' which became a movie called, `Dagon,' and, of course, `Re-animator.' All utterly failed to capture the true Lovecraft.

If you want to just get a taste of the Lovecraft experience (which it has come to be known) I recommend these three popular favorites: "The Call of Cthulhu (Horror)," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth (Horror)," "The Whisperer in Darkness (Science Fiction," "The Colour Out of Space (Science Fiction)" "The Doom that came to Sarnath (Fantasy)," and, "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (Fantasy)." All of which I'm sure you can find individually somewhere.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

One of the most influential practitioners of American horror, H.P. Lovecraft inspired the work of Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker. As he perfected his mastery of the macabre, his works developed from seminal fragments into acknowledged masterpieces of terror. This volume traces his chilling career and includes:
IMPRISONED WITH THE PHARAOHS--Houdini seeks to reveal the demons that inhabit the Egyptian night.
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS--An unsuspecting expedition uncovers a city of untold terror, buried beneath an Antarctic wasteland.
Plus, for the first time in any Del Rey edition:
HERBERT WEST: REANIMATOR--Mad experiments yield hideous results in this, the inspiration for the cult film Re-Animator.
COOL AIR--An icy apartment hides secrets no man dares unlock.
THE TERRIBLE OLD MAN--The intruders seek a fortune but find only death!
AND TWENTY-FOUR MORE BLOOD-CHILLING TALES

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