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5.0 out of 5 stars
'The Full H.P. Lovecraft Experience!', Oct 15 2002
Despite reading 'The Mountains of Madness'; 'The Tomb'; and particularly 'Pickman's Model' in a brightly lit, populated main hall of the Boston Public Library in mid-day, I was still creeped out of my skin by the writing skill of this author - thus I became an H.P. Lovecraft advocate! But I wanted more. I wanted the full H.P. Lovecraft experience!
I decided to read 'THE LURKING FEAR And Other Stories' (c.1939, 1985) by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, overnight in the small graveyard on K & E. 5th streets, adjacent to the grade school I attended as a kid. So with book under arm, I left my local watering hole at last call and walked down a dark street, took a left, and stood in front of the small 1840s graveyard "where deformed trees tossed insane branches as their roots displaced unhallowed slabs and sucked venom from what lay below". Yup, this will do nicely.
So I hopped the low black wrought-iron spiked fence, sat down near a street light, coupled with a bright beacon October moon which casted "charonian shadows athwart the low mounds that dotted and streaked the region". I sat on a grave and leaned against a chipped and cracked slate headstone, and in this very un-library like atmosphere, began to read THE LURKING FEAR.
I sat comfortably "where the thick weeds grew and cast queer shadows in the light" and suddenly saw a rat run across a nearby grave. Uh, no problem, since rats are as common as seagulls in Boston; I finished part-one of THE LURKING FEAR in dark and shadow, when I suddenly jolted an inch off the grave recoiling my hand like lightning "for it was out of a phantasmal chaos that my mind leaped when the night grew hideous with shrieks beyond anything in my former experience or imagination."
The wind had blown a wet leaf on my hand in the dark and I yelped like a puppy. I resumed reading THE LURKING FEAR after my tachycardia and hyperventilation had subsided. The streetlight went out for some unknown reason and I was forced to finish THE LURKING FEAR, appropriately, by moonlight.
H.P. Lovecraft was criticized for a wordy adjectival writing style which his proponents, including myself, admired for setting 'atmosphere' to his storytelling. His use of the first person narrative only added to the distance of the author from the reader, so the reader would feel absolutely connected with the characters in the story, and, through analogy, feel the terror they experienced. Other writers of horror, particularly the very ineffective Stephen King, have not mastered atmospheric writing. In THE LURKING FEAR the author conveyed this sense of connection as he brought the reader, through the narrative of his nameless investigator, to Tempest Mountain, then inside the Martense Mansion and in the graves and tunnels of the elusive inhuman quarry.
So by the time I finished reading THE LURKING FEAR in this neglected neighborhood graveyard, the author had done his stuff and I was covered in a cold sweat from head to toe. My hands were clammy, unusually white and waxlike, and strangely still as H.P. Lovecraft finished the story describing the multitude of ape-like things which swarmed out of the tunnels near Martense mansion as "the ultimae product of mammalian degeneration; the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication, and cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; the embodiment of all the snarling chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life". This last exposition of H.P. Lovecraft in THE LURKING FEAR suddenly made me curious of the name on the headstone I was leaning. It was my name!
They found my body in the morning: I had received the full H.P. Lovecraft experience.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A good buy if you can't find these stories elsewhere, Mar 20 2002
It seems unfortunate to me that this collection's title comes from "The Lurking Fear," a story which I rank very low among Lovecraft's efforts. "Dagon" and "The Temple" are interesting and bear a connection with Cthulhu and his abode beneath the sea. "Arthur Jermyn" reflects Lovecraft's interest in genealogy, history, as well as issues of miscegenation, inbreeding, and hereditary degeneration over time. Several stories can be classified among the dream image motif Lovecraft developed early on in his mature fiction, while "The Outsider" is quite allegorical and fairly easy to figure out in advance of the ending. Two of the best selections to be found here are "The Hound" and "The Unnameable," two ghost stories of a sort. While "The Hound" is less than original, Lovecraft excels in describing the depravity of the minds of the two main characters and in creating a gruesome, well-defined inner sanctum of evil. "The Unnameable" is akin to a campfire ghost tale, but the somewhat trivial conclusion robs it of some effectiveness. It is rather odd to find "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" in this collection. All of the other stories were written in or before 1927, while "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" bears a birth date of 1931; at this point in his career, Lovecraft was in his prime, and the effective honing of his writing within the intervening four years is quite apparent. This story works on all levels. A young traveler stops off in a strange city shunned by the outside community, discovers an incredibly disturbing town history, and eventually faces a frightful attack by terrifyingly fish-like beings. The atmosphere of Innsmouth is incredibly rich and detailed--you can almost smell the terrible fish odor yourself--and the protagonist's escape attempt is wonderfully suspenseful. The story culminates in a twist that I for one did not foresee, which was a welcome bonus to an already intriguing, satisfying read. Most of these stories can be found elsewhere (including other Ballantine HPL publications), so even the greatest admirer of Lovecraft can survive without purchasing this item. In addition, the publishing standards of this book seem somewhat low; "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" in particular deserves much better. This book is great if you can't find these stories elsewhere, but dedicated readers of Lovecraft will want to have a product of higher publishing quality.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
the right stuff, a poor container, Feb 16 2002
I Happen to own this volume and this is a tribute to how young, ignorant and tastelesse I was at the time.It is part of a set of five. These are poorly edited, and ill printed on crummy paper. Additionally, the collection happens to have a number of stories that are printed twice, and to omit several of HPL's not so minor stories. A publisher who gives this kind of treatment to a writer and to his customers doesn't deserve your money.If you like HPL, or just want to discover his works, do yourself and the publishing industry a favor, get your book somewhere else, there are some better collections and omnibuses around waiting for the more discriminating reader
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