There is a good chance that you’ve heard of H. P. Lovecraft referred to more often through the adjective “Lovecraftian” than from any references to the actual plots of his stories. With the season of horror upon of us, now may be a good time to get acquainted with the work of one of the founders of the modern horror genre. Tales of H. P. Lovecraft is a fine primer of the author’s themes and style, with ten of his most note-worthy short stories and novellas, including such classics as “The Call of Cthulhu,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” Bookending the story collection are an introduction by Southern Gothic writer Joyce Carol Oates and an appendix that includes a short piece by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft’s own essay “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” and a short selection of movies based on Lovecraft’s work.
Lovecraft’s method of building horror is to describe setting and action very precisely, grounding things as firmly is mundane reality as possible, before reaching the fantastical element that should not be and that there are no words to describe. Much of his work leaves out dialogue entirely in favor of the narrator sounding more realistically like a scholar (most of his narrators are, if not academics, notably highly educated) relaying events after the fact. Unfortunately for the modern reader, one of Lovecraft’s main sources of horror, intrusion of what should not be into our wholesome reality, shows up, not only as tentacled monsters from outside our space and time, but also more mundane xenophobia and racism. Tainted bloodlines are a recurring feature, swarthy malefactors are commonplace, and one story, “The Rats in the Walls,” has a plot that turns on the actions of a black cat named for a racial slur (and Lovecraft’s own real-life pet). “The Colour Out of Space” may be my favorite story from the collection in part because of premise divorces the source of the horror from humanity by relating the effects of a contagion carried to a New England farmstead by a bizarre meteor crashing near the well.
Lovecraft did most of his writing in the two decades before his death in 1937, and it does show its age. However, it also shows the foundation stones that much of the modern horror genre is built on and that makes it worthy of study, even as that study should be taken with a critical eye. The best of Tales of H. P. Lovecraft will still give you chills.