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Lovecraft reading group
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While I've read a lot of Lovecraft's works, there are some gaps in his collection I need to fill in. So for my summer project I want to start reading all of Lovecraft's work, including his collaborations. Would anyone like to start a Lovecraft reading group? I was thinking of reading and discussing three or four stories a month. Starting with "The Tomb" and ending with "The Haunter of the Dark"
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Book club guy endorses this. I would be down. Could even do a podcast or two about it. Not that I am keeping up with my existing schedule >.>
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I'm available for a Catch-22 recording whenever, Jon.
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Thanks, Paul. I'll probably be free to do it next week. I'll be in touch.
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I just recently read Lovecraft for the first time a week ago. It was " The Thing on the Doorstep", and it was pretty good although you could see the twist coming a mile away. From this story so far I haven't encountered any of the racism that he's known for although he did make the woman the evil character.
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Awesome. I'm glad there's some interest in this. Here's "The Tomb". I guess I'll just post a new story every Monday and discussions could follow through the week, unless anyone can suggest a better format in which to do this.
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Creaty: I've always thought Lovecraft's twists were kind of lame, I think he shines more in concept. I remember, more than a few times, staying up late to read a story and thinking 'wow, I saw that coming...but it's still scary as hell...and now I have to turn on all the lights in my house'
As for "The Thing on the Doorstep", it was written towards the end of Lovecraft's life, and while I bet he was still a pretty racist guy, it's either reflected less in his work at the time, or, maybe, he knew he was dying, and was trying to be less of a dick. "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family", "The Street", "Polaris", and "The Horror at Redhook" are all pretty racist, but were written much earlier in his life.
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I've just never been able to get into Lovecraft. I get the reasons why people like him, but they don't really appeal to me. His prose is rather overwrought and he's not really that scary. The only work I've yet encountered that's really done the whole cosmic horror bit justice in actually making it scary is John Dies At The End, believe it or not. Everything else is mildly clever ("A Study In Emerald"), serviceable (everyone else), or repulsively bad (Neonomicon). Thomas Ligotti really nails the kind of nihilism implicit in Lovecraftian/cosmic horror, but his worldview is so cartoonishly bleak as to be really humorous. Speaking of Ligotti, more people should read him; check out "My Work Is Not Yet Done" and his Nightmare Factory collection.
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I'm amused by the notion of an actual Lovecraft reading group. "It appears that at least half of us survived reading the Necronomicon with our minds intact, so next month we're going to go with The King In Yellow..."
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In my mind that is now canon for how every Lovecraftian cult started.
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Barnes and Noble has a Lovecraft "Complete Fiction" book for about $20. It's part of a B&N set they're doing so it's got a pretty nice backing. I'd never read any Lovecraft but I wanted to, so I picked it up on a whim about a month ago.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/barnes-noble-leatherbound-classics-hp-lovecraft-h-p-lovecraft/1106658815
I've only gotten through the first 4 or 5 stories so far but one of them was indeed, "The Tomb."
