I particularly like how he deals with one of the challenges of serial publication-the recap at the beginning of each episode-and turns it to his advantage, creating a somewhat different recap every time, each entertaining in its own way. Lovecraft clearly enjoyed writing this farce, and I think you will enjoy reading it too, appreciating how he transforms his great weakness as a writer-a penchant for overwrought prose-into a positive strength. Still, these failures are more successful than they think, and literally come back to haunt them.
Although they may produce a series of twitches, a leap or a howl-and even the occasional word here and there-their experiments are ludicrous failures. Herbert West, the grave blue-eyed, blond-haired medical student and his narrator sidekick, raid the nearby graveyards and hospitals looking for fresh corpses to stir into life. embraces this over-the-top tale of “re-animation”-a congeries of cliches filched from Frankenstein, “The Body Snatcher” and more debased sources-and makes of it a mocking parody of gothic horror, the only thoroughly successful work of death’s head humor Lovecraft ever achieved. Although Lovecraft’s interest in atmospheric effects often mars “The Lurking Fear”’s humorous tone, “Herbert West” is unharmed by any serious horror. This story, like H.P.’s subsequent work “The Lurking Fear,” was written to-order as a serial publication for the humor magazine Home Brew. Lovecraft stories don't usually make me think of Mel Brooks and Bruce Campbell, but "Herbert West" is definitely an exception. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.Īlthough Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.
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