11-08-2007, 04:34 PM
I found this old Arkham House hardcover at Recycle Books, and snapped it up because it has my favorite of his stories, The Strange High House in the Mist. It also has maybe the ugliest jacket art I've ever seen, and a terrible introduction where August Derleth seems to say that Lovecraft thought the contents were his second-rate stuff.
I haven't read this stuff in years. Some stories I didn't remember at all. Some of it was very good, some not so. After a while you find that many stories are variations of the same idea used elsewhere, and indeed some of the variations are second rate.
I still really like this stuff, despite the pseudo-Poe language, but a fair amount of it is more silly than disturbing. (No wonder Neil Gaiman parodied it in a couple of stories in Smoke and Mirrors. But since this is supposedly the weaker stuff, I've ordered the other Arkham volume to read the good stuff.
I haven't read this stuff in years. Some stories I didn't remember at all. Some of it was very good, some not so. After a while you find that many stories are variations of the same idea used elsewhere, and indeed some of the variations are second rate.
I still really like this stuff, despite the pseudo-Poe language, but a fair amount of it is more silly than disturbing. (No wonder Neil Gaiman parodied it in a couple of stories in Smoke and Mirrors. But since this is supposedly the weaker stuff, I've ordered the other Arkham volume to read the good stuff.
the hands that guide me are invisible