"The Best of H.P. Lovecraft", by H.P. Lovecraft

The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Excellent collection of the master of horror! I had read this already back in high school, but I didn’t remember much of it. I decided that since there are so many references to Lovecraft’s work all over the place (books, movies, games, comics, etc…), I should give it a re-read. One of the things I do remember was that it was scary. It’s not easy for a book to be scary - movies can easily make you jump, but without the benefit of graphic scenes and loud noises, a book has to do a lot more work to get you scared - and Lovecraft manages just that.

I was surprised by the variety of stories in this collection. A lot of the stories (and none of the earlier ones) stories have nothing to do with the Cthulhu mythos, and are your typical horror stories - an anecdote with a horror twist at the end. But it’s when he gets to the Cthulhu mythos that he really shows his mastery. Some of the stories start as a mystery or adventure story, salted heavily with allusions to hidden things, great mysteries, and “unspeakable horrors”. Despite the exaggerated foreshadowing, Lovecraft does construct a good story, with interesting plot devices (at one point, doom is predicted not by a person having a vision, but by a *statistical analysis* of dreams and visions over a period!), and cliffhangers. His stories sometime link in subtle ways too - you will recognize things in one story that got mentioned in another that in principle had nothing to do with it (they are not sequels), so you slowly get the feeling of a larger world with a lot going on underneath. Another things that surprised me is that this is very much a sci-fi book - the monsters are usually characterized as aliens, be it from other planets or from other “dimensions”. There is a lot of space travel, travel through the folding of space, and the importance of physics and mathematics to the stories. There are even mentions of Einstein, relativity, quantum physics !

The major downside of the book is how melodramatic his prose is, specially his use of adjectives. Halfway through the book, it starts getting repetitive, as there are only so many ways to preface the word horror: "indescribable horror”, “Cyclopean horror”, "realms of unfathomable horror and inconceivable abnormality”, etc…

There are also an immeasurable number of incongruences to his plots and plot devices. For example, in a few of his stories, there are all-powerful antagonists, ancient beings who have mastered all sorts of dark arts and can destroy all of humanity at a whim, and yet are foiled by dogs (“The Dunwich Horror”, “The Whisperer in Darkness”). Another example is how his characters are always getting horrified by architecture, geometry and language - really, how bad can it be? It makes it difficult to relate sometimes. When someone says how they were paralyzed with fear because of the horrible architecture of the place, it’s not easy to feel sympathetic. A passage says: "My head was aching, and I had a singular feeling that someone else was trying to get possession of my thoughts” You know that feeling that someone is trying to get possession of your thoughts? Yeah, me neither.

In the end, if you do get past all the melodrama, you get treated to a vast mythos, with creatures and legends that pop up all over the place (“ah, so this is where that comes from!”), and that have laid important foundations to the genre of horror and sic-fi.

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"The Gates", by John Connolly

The Gates by John Connolly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Good book, it felt a lot like a Neil Gaiman story, but with a lot more pseudo-science, and a lot less obscure mythology.



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"Burnt Tongues", edited by Chuck Palahniuk

Burnt Tongues by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a collection of short stories, edited by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of "Fight Club", or more relevantly, of “Guts” and “Haunted”. He characterizes these stories as “transgressive literature”, stuff that pushes the edge and sometimes go right past it. Basically, it’s stuff that should be taboo, or disgusting, or from the mind of a disturbed individual, definitely something you do not talk about in polite conversation; and it’s eye-opening and wildly entertaining!

If you have read “Guts”, “Haunted”, or some of Palahniuk’s short stories, then you know what this is about (“Fight Club” is tame by comparison). But while I love Palahniuk’s work, this collection is only so-so. The quality of the stories vary a lot. There are a few stories there (like the first one, “Live This Down") that feel like something that Palahniuk would have written himself, from the subject to the style to the dialogue, and most of them have themes that must make Palahniuk proud (like a Special Ed class revolting against a bully, with terrible consequences). But while all stories are “transgressive”, not all are entertaining. They touch on a taboo subject, describe it, then peter out. Most of them end in an anti-climax. They are good, but not great.

Still, there are some gems in there - again, “Live This Down”, and also “Ingredients”, “Dietary", “Heavier Petting” and “Zombie Whorehouse”, among others. They are not for everyone - they are twisted, messed up stuff. If you like crazy and you like it with style, pick this up, it’s a good read.

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