This horror novella was a significant improvement on At The Mountains of Madness.
Charles Dexter Ward has just disappeared from a lunatic asylum after an interview with his family doctor which has left the doctor reeling from unimaginable horrors. The story is told to explain this.
Charles is researching into his family tree. He discovers an ancestor, Joseph Curwen, who was involved in strange experiments and nefarious goings on in just-pre-revolutionary Boston. We learn more about what happened then; it becomes clear that Curwen is conjuring up spirits.
As we move back to Ward, the boy's behaviour becomes stranger. There are mysterious happenings in local graveyards. There are strange noises from his attic room. At last he is moved into an asylum. The good family doctor goes to his house and discovers a secret passage; in the catacombs beneath are unnameable horrors and magic incantations. The doctor somehow escapes with his life (we never find out how) and the secret passage is mysteriously sealed up.
Ready for the final confrontation in the asylum...
A good horror yarn which actually made me close the curtains against the darkness outside.
September 2014; 159 pages
Showing posts with label Lovecraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lovecraft. Show all posts
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Wednesday, 10 September 2014
"At the Mountains of Madness" by H.P.Lovecraft
Lovecraft is one of the formative influences on later horror. His style is in transition from the long-windedness of the Victorians towards the brevity of his contemporary H. G. Wells.
This book tells of an Antarctic expedition which discovers traces of a lost civilization in an awesomely high mountain range. It has all the classic Atlantean elements: the highly intelligent Old Ones become decadent and are finally overwhelmed by a combination of the harsh elements and Shoggoth beasts that they have genetically engineered to be their slaves. The narrator, a polar scientist, describes his investigation of the lost city of the Old Ones in which he and his partner discover far more than any scientists could do in less than 24 hours, mostly from what must be a great number of highly detailed sculptures left by the Old Ones. It is all a bit far-fetched.
There is a fantastic amount of description about the lost city which serves virtually no plot purpose. The entire plot could be summarised ina few pages. The rest is just padding.
For horror effect, Lovecraft relies on his own failure to describe things. Heights and distances are 'immeasurable'. Horrors are 'nameless'; numbers 'incalculable', reality 'ineluctable', odours are 'unknown'. This is a clever technique but he uses it so much that it becomes almost a parody of itself.
He also refers back to his imaginary world repeatedly. Thus he references the Necronomicon, written by the Mad Arab, again and again. Not subtle!
I suspect this book was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket which ends in a strangely warm Antarctic with a tribe of hostile men.
Even at short novella length this dragged. September 2014; 139 pages
This book tells of an Antarctic expedition which discovers traces of a lost civilization in an awesomely high mountain range. It has all the classic Atlantean elements: the highly intelligent Old Ones become decadent and are finally overwhelmed by a combination of the harsh elements and Shoggoth beasts that they have genetically engineered to be their slaves. The narrator, a polar scientist, describes his investigation of the lost city of the Old Ones in which he and his partner discover far more than any scientists could do in less than 24 hours, mostly from what must be a great number of highly detailed sculptures left by the Old Ones. It is all a bit far-fetched.
There is a fantastic amount of description about the lost city which serves virtually no plot purpose. The entire plot could be summarised ina few pages. The rest is just padding.
For horror effect, Lovecraft relies on his own failure to describe things. Heights and distances are 'immeasurable'. Horrors are 'nameless'; numbers 'incalculable', reality 'ineluctable', odours are 'unknown'. This is a clever technique but he uses it so much that it becomes almost a parody of itself.
He also refers back to his imaginary world repeatedly. Thus he references the Necronomicon, written by the Mad Arab, again and again. Not subtle!
I suspect this book was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket which ends in a strangely warm Antarctic with a tribe of hostile men.
Even at short novella length this dragged. September 2014; 139 pages
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)