Although this essay is several years old, it deserves a place here, where Google, et al, can make binary mince-meat out of it and other fans of H.P. Lovecraft can hear the pot-banging call of another fan. --J.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote his strange stories in the early twentieth century. He never had a real novel published in his lifetime since he wrote mainly essays, letters, and weird fiction set (mainly) in the Northeast. He died in 1936 (at age 46) of intestinal cancer and suffered both physically and mentally throughout his life. He is considered by many contemporary authors as the father of modern horror. I've read most of his published fiction but my two favorites are "The Dreamquest of Unkown Kaddath" and "The Lurking Fear".
This story has many of the classic elements you'd expect to find in any Lovecraft story. Although there aren't any worshippers of hideous, mythological creatures and there are no references to the Necronomicon (mainstays of almost all other Lovecraftian stories), it has his dark, brooding atmosphere, an almost embarrassing xenophobia of poor rural folk, and a vicious monster the main character is both repelled by and drawn to.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote his strange stories in the early twentieth century. He never had a real novel published in his lifetime since he wrote mainly essays, letters, and weird fiction set (mainly) in the Northeast. He died in 1936 (at age 46) of intestinal cancer and suffered both physically and mentally throughout his life. He is considered by many contemporary authors as the father of modern horror. I've read most of his published fiction but my two favorites are "The Dreamquest of Unkown Kaddath" and "The Lurking Fear".
This story has many of the classic elements you'd expect to find in any Lovecraft story. Although there aren't any worshippers of hideous, mythological creatures and there are no references to the Necronomicon (mainstays of almost all other Lovecraftian stories), it has his dark, brooding atmosphere, an almost embarrassing xenophobia of poor rural folk, and a vicious monster the main character is both repelled by and drawn to.
As with most Lovecraft stories, the plot is simple: tragedy has
occurred in a small, rural village and the main character goes, at the behest of a close friend of his (and relative to the Martense family, around which the story is centered) to
"investigate" so he can acquire source material for his writing. During his stay,
there a number of attacks against the local population and he
gets increasingly desperate to explain what's going on. At one point,
he digs up the grave of one the Martense family members and exposes a network of
underground tunnels where he runs into a pair of the creatures while
crawling through the dank earth. He is saved from being torn apart by the creatures by a lightning strike
(for which the area is infamous) that rends open the dirt above him and
allows him to escape while scaring off the creatures.
He acquires more information about the Martense family, who had built a large plantation in the area and whose house stands abandoned on the hilltop that seems to be the center of all the attacks. After losing several companions to the monsters, the main character traces the tunnels back to the Martense mansion itself and discovers a passageway through a fireplace from which the monsters come above ground. The last image of the story is that of him seeing the peculiar coloration of the creature's eyes and his horror at realizing that the Martense family also had that genetic trait. The monsters are the descendants of the Martense family, who slunk away from the world and drove themselves underground to escape the frequent thuderstorms and, apparently, inbred to the point of devolution.
What drew me to this story is the surprise ending and the desperation with which the main character is seeking the truth. Although first published in 1922-3, the story itself doesn't feel dated. I don't know if it was the influence of his copious letter and essay writing that bled over into his fiction or if it was a wholly-conscious stylistic choice, but "The Lurking Fear" (as is typical of most of his work) has no dialogue. Instead, it's a first-person narrative relating the main character's experiences at some point removed from the events themselves. That characteristic of his fiction is one of the things that make up the term "Lovecraftian" and is just one of the things that distinguished his work from everyone else.
Some of the things that I would like to imitate include the depth of the Lovecraftian world. There is an entire mythos derived from Lovecraft's worlds. It's called the "Cthulu Mythos" and is derived from the god in the story "The Call of Cthulu".
His use of intertextuality in most of his stories is much more pronounced than in, say, Wm. Faulkner. Lovecraft used the Northeast the way Faulkner used Yoknahoohaa county (let's just say northwest Mississippi, shall we?). He usually weaves in characters, gods, and dusty tomes from other stories.
Beyond all other things that draw me to Lovecraft is his redefinition of what we fear. Though many of his stories certainly contain what we could define as "monsters", in the context of Lovecraft they become something else: his characters fear Ambition, Pride, Vanity, and Intellectual Curiosity. Even the monsters themselves are manifestations of these redefined fears. In "The Lurking Fear" it's the devolved Martense family, who have become deformed through their turn inward and downward. In The Dreamquest of Unkown Kaddath, it's the main character's obsession with finding the hidden city of Kaddath, in which the gods are rumored to live, that drives him to travel all over the dream world.
He acquires more information about the Martense family, who had built a large plantation in the area and whose house stands abandoned on the hilltop that seems to be the center of all the attacks. After losing several companions to the monsters, the main character traces the tunnels back to the Martense mansion itself and discovers a passageway through a fireplace from which the monsters come above ground. The last image of the story is that of him seeing the peculiar coloration of the creature's eyes and his horror at realizing that the Martense family also had that genetic trait. The monsters are the descendants of the Martense family, who slunk away from the world and drove themselves underground to escape the frequent thuderstorms and, apparently, inbred to the point of devolution.
What drew me to this story is the surprise ending and the desperation with which the main character is seeking the truth. Although first published in 1922-3, the story itself doesn't feel dated. I don't know if it was the influence of his copious letter and essay writing that bled over into his fiction or if it was a wholly-conscious stylistic choice, but "The Lurking Fear" (as is typical of most of his work) has no dialogue. Instead, it's a first-person narrative relating the main character's experiences at some point removed from the events themselves. That characteristic of his fiction is one of the things that make up the term "Lovecraftian" and is just one of the things that distinguished his work from everyone else.
Some of the things that I would like to imitate include the depth of the Lovecraftian world. There is an entire mythos derived from Lovecraft's worlds. It's called the "Cthulu Mythos" and is derived from the god in the story "The Call of Cthulu".
His use of intertextuality in most of his stories is much more pronounced than in, say, Wm. Faulkner. Lovecraft used the Northeast the way Faulkner used Yoknahoohaa county (let's just say northwest Mississippi, shall we?). He usually weaves in characters, gods, and dusty tomes from other stories.
Beyond all other things that draw me to Lovecraft is his redefinition of what we fear. Though many of his stories certainly contain what we could define as "monsters", in the context of Lovecraft they become something else: his characters fear Ambition, Pride, Vanity, and Intellectual Curiosity. Even the monsters themselves are manifestations of these redefined fears. In "The Lurking Fear" it's the devolved Martense family, who have become deformed through their turn inward and downward. In The Dreamquest of Unkown Kaddath, it's the main character's obsession with finding the hidden city of Kaddath, in which the gods are rumored to live, that drives him to travel all over the dream world.
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