You'll have to forgive me this week for not having a wonderful, thought-provoking book review. I have good reasons to which I'll layout for you right now. First, it takes a long time to read a book and consume all it has to offer. I can't exactly read War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov in one week and then actually have enough brain cells left to write a review on said works (I've read neither of these by the way). Secondly, I've taken it upon myself to begin reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which is a 700+ page book that consists of footnotes within footnotes, long passages in Latin/German/Hebrew, and parts of chapters that can't be read unless held up to a mirror. It's an experience to say the least and am currently equating myself with that of Dante, taking upon himself the burden of discovering the horrors of Hell, so you'll forgive me for not having a review for this book yet.
Instead, I've decided to review a couple short stories written by one of the great horror masters of all time, H.P. Lovecraft. I've been a long time fan of Lovecraft and believe that you should familiarize yourself with at least some of his more famous works such as "The Call of Cthulhu" or "At the Mountains of Madness". Being an author of "weird horror", his readers must simultaneously suspend their rationale while expanding their imagination to enjoy his stories. He also writes in a similar style to that of Poe, with eloquent diction and long spanning sentences. With that said, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge once stated, we must be willing to suspend our disbelief and involve ourselves in the story and events taking place in order to appreciate what the author is trying to portray. Only then may we actually peer into the mind that is Lovecraft.
"The Beast in the Cave"
I decided not to review some of the more well-known Lovecraft stories for the sake of saving those for you to read. Instead, I chose a couple of my personal favorites that pioneered my love for his works. The first story that I ever read was "The Beast in the Cave", a short story that takes place in Mammoth Cave where a man loses his tour group and becomes utterly disoriented and lost. When the torch he's carrying finally extinguishes his imagination begins to take over as he succumbs to claustrophobia and a very real fear of death. When he starts to hear footsteps somewhere behind him, he all but falls into insanity. The ending to this story comes as a shock, leaving the reader with a slight chill creeping up their spine.
"The Tomb"
This short story stands as one of the more eerier ones that I've read in my musings of Lovecraft. It's about a self-proclaimed daydreamer, Jervas Dudley, who becomes enthralled with a mausoleum belonging to a family who died in a mansion fire years ago. From the very first lines of the story though, we find that Jervas claims to be an unreliable source for the tale he is about to tell, and that many others consider him insane. His story is one that revolves around his constant return to the tomb in order to sleep in an empty coffin labeled with the name, "Jervas" (or so he believes). As his obsession progresses he begins to develop a fear of thunder and fire (a parallel to how the mansion was burned down), as well as an almost tangible case of paranoia. As an eerily psychotic story, "The Tomb" is one of Lovecraft's finest.
Pick up a Lovecraft book tomorrow. Everyone deserves to discover the cosmic side of the horror-fantasy genre.
-- Zach
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