The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories Read online

  Lovecraft’s reputation as a fiction writer rests upon a remarkably small body of work: about sixty short stories, three of which, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926-27), The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927), and At the Mountains of Madness, might be classified as short novels. And yet, this small corpus of fiction presents a surprising richness of form, substance, and texture.

  Lovecraft’s fiction must be understood in the context of the philosophical thought that he evolved over a lifetime of study and observation. The core of that thought—derived from readings of such ancient Greek philosophers as Democritus and Epicurus as well as from absorption of the discoveries of nineteenth-century physics, chemistry, and biology—is mechanistic materialism. This is the belief that the universe is a “mechanism” operating according to fixed laws (although these may not all be known to human beings), and that there can be no immaterial substance such as a soul or spirit. Such a view necessarily necessitates agnosticism or actual atheism, and Lovecraft was not slow in expressing his adherence to the latter: I certainly can’t see any sensible position to assume aside from that of complete scepticism tempered by a leaning toward that which existing evidence makes most probable. All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don’t regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chance’s of theism’s truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else. (SL IV.57)

  In the mid-1920s Lovecraft was momentarily disturbed by the implications of Einstein’s relativity theory and Planck’s quantum theory, both of which were hailed by many as spelling the downfall of mechanistic materialism; but his later adherence to the materialism of Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, and others allowed him to reconcile the findings of modern astrophysics with his fundamental views.

  However, does not Lovecraft’s philosophy contradict his stated motives for writing weird fiction, as enunciated in the essay “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” (1933)?

  I choose weird stories because they suit my inclinations best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis. (MW 113)

  It is important not to be led astray here. Lovecraft is not renouncing his materialism by seeking an imaginative escape from it; indeed, it is precisely because he believes that “time, space, and natural law” are uniform, and that the human mind cannot defeat or confound them, that he seeks an imaginative escape from them.

  Lovecraft’s philosophical position virtually necessitated the central conception in his aesthetic of the weird—the notion of cosmicism, or the suggestion of the vast gulfs of space and time and the resultant inconsequence of the human species. Lovecraft claimed to have derived this sentiment as early as the age of twelve, when he first studied astronomy: The most poignant sensations of my existence are those of 1896, when I discovered the Hellenic world, and of 1902, when I discovered the myriad suns and worlds of infinite space. Sometimes I think the latter event the greater, for the grandeur of that growing conception of the universe still excites a thrill hardly to be duplicated. (“A Confession of Unfaith” [1922]; MW 536)

  This led to one of his most resounding utterances, made in a letter of 1927: Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large. To me there is nothing but puerility in a tale in which the human form—and the local human passions and conditions and standards—are depicted as native to other worlds or other universes. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all. Only the human scenes and characters must have human qualities. These must be handled with unsparing realism, (not catch-penny romanticism ) but when we cross the line to the boundless and hideous unknown—the shadow-haunted Outside—we must remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold. (SL II.150)

  This statement is sufficient to account for the outré aspect of many of his alien creatures—the cosmic entity Cthulhu, the nebulous creature (or creatures) of “The Colour Out of Space,” the fungi from Yuggoth in “The Whisperer in Darkness,” and the Old Ones of At the Mountains of Madness. It also points to Lovecraft’s central place in the fusion of traditional weird fiction and the then-emerging genre of science fiction. A late utterance is highly significant in this regard: The time has come when the normal revolt against time, space, and matter must assume a form not overtly incompatible with what is known of reality—when it must be gratified by images forming supplements rather than contradictions of the visible and mensurable universe. And what, if not a form of non-supernatural cosmic art, is to pacify this sense of revolt—as well as gratify the cognate sense of curiosity? (SL III.295-96)

  Lovecraft here is actually renouncing the supernatural for what might better be called the “supernormal”; that is, the incidents portrayed in his later tales no longer defy natural law, but merely our imperfect conceptions of natural law. His later work, accordingly, could be said to be fully within the field of science fiction aside from its manifest intent to incite fear. It is significant that Lovecraft’s most “cosmic” stories—“The Colour Out of Space,” At the Mountains of Madness, and “The Shadow Out of Time”—appeared in the science fiction magazines Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories.

  One facet of Lovecraft’s work that has exercised many readers’ imaginations is what has come to be called the “Cthulhu Mythos.” This term was not coined by Lovecraft, but rather by August Derleth, who, while being obsessed by it, failed to grasp its purpose. In effect, the “Cthulhu Mythos” is a series of plot devices utilized by Lovecraft to convey the essentials of his cosmic philosophy. These devices—including a wide array of extraterrestrials (deemed “gods” by their human followers); an entire library of mythical books containing the “forbidden” truths about these “gods”; and a fictionalized New England landscape analogous to Hardy’s Wessex or Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County—are certainly found abundantly in Lovecraft’s later tales and lend them a kind of thematic unity not found in other work of their kind. But if the “Cthulhu Mythos” has any significance, it is as an instantiation of what David E. Schultz has termed an “anti-mythology”: whereas most of the religions and mythologies in human history seek to reconcile human beings with the cosmos by depicting a close, benign relationship between man and god, Lovecraft’s pseudomythology brutally shows that man is not the center of the universe, that the “gods” care nothing for him, and that the earth and all its inhabitants are but a momentary incident in the unending cyclical chaos of the universe.

  Lovecraft could hardly have imagined the radical evolution of his work when he first began seriously writing fiction in 1917. Bred from earliest childhood on the literature of the past, Lovecraft gained a poignant nostalgia for the eighteenth century. What he later said of his poetry could apply in lesser degree to his earlier stories as well: In my metrical novitiate I was, alas, a chronic & inveterate mimic; allowing my antiquarian tendencies to get the better of my abstract poetic feeling. As a result, the whole purpose of my writing soon became distorted—till at length I wrote only as a means of re-creating around me the
atmosphere of my 18th century favourites. (SL II.314)

  What this meant, as far as his fiction was concerned, was that Lovecraft spent the bulk of his literary career attempting—if at times only subconsciously—to escape the overriding influence of his earliest mentor, Edgar Allan Poe. As Lovecraft’s “God of Fiction” (SL I.20), Poe inevitably hangs heavy over such early works as “The Tomb” (1917) and “The Outsider” (1921).

  In this sense, Lovecraft’s discovery of the work of Lord Dunsany in 1919 was beneficial, if only because it resulted in a transference of influence from the American sphere to that of the great Irish fantasist. For two years Lovecraft produced a string of works imitative of his idol, who was then enjoying a tremendous vogue in America. While many of these tales of pure fantasy are undistinguished in themselves, they are of interest as representing the widest possible divergence in tone from the supernatural horror of his other work. Lovecraft was also aware of what he had gained from Dunsany, and as early as 1920 he observed: “The flight of imagination, and the delineation of pastoral or natural beauty, can be accomplished as well in prose as in verse—often better. It is this lesson which the inimitable Dunsany hath taught me” (SL I.110). This comment was made in a discussion of Lovecraft’s verse writing; and it is no accident that his verse output declined dramatically after 1920. More to the point, Lovecraft learned from Dunsany how to enunciate his philosophical, aesthetic, and moral conceptions by means of fiction.

  In 1923 the discovery of the Welsh writer Arthur Machen fired Lovecraft’s imagination, although he did not produce any obvious imitations of Machen’s work. This discovery coincided with Lovecraft’s renewed interest in his New England heritage; he was at this time engaging in wide travels across his native region, absorbing both its rich history and its varied topography, and Machen’s own evocations of Wales may have shown Lovecraft how to do the same for the land of his birth. The Marblehead of “The Festival” (1923), the Providence of “The Shunned House” (1924), and even the New York of “The Horror at Red Hook” and “He” owe something to Machen’s example. Lovecraft was well on his way to becoming a significant local colorist, and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (1931) is perhaps the supreme example of this facet of his work.

  Lovecraft’s prose style has engendered widely divergent judgments, from the towering condemnation of Edmund Wilson to the adulation of his colleagues and disciples, who have sought to imitate (usually in vain) both his stylistic richness and his verbal witchery. Put very simply, Lovecraft’s style is a melding of scientific realism and evocative prose-poetry. One is certainly free to dislike the style and to prefer the spareness of Hemingway or Sherwood Anderson; but it would be difficult to deny its appropriateness for Lovecraft’s type of imaginative effect. At its best Lovecraft’s work becomes a kind of incantation, seducing the mind into a momentary acceptance of the fantastic incidents being related. At its worst it becomes pompous and bombastic. But Lovecraft was almost always the master, rather than the slave, of his style—a point that can be emphasized by considering those two exquisite parodies of himself, “Herbert West—Reanimator” (1921-22) and “The Hound” (1922). And Lovecraft was capable of a far broader diversity of style than has commonly been granted—from the delicate prose-poetry of “Celephaïs” (1920) to the modernized Gothicism of “The Rats in the Walls” (1923) to the stupendous cosmicism of “The Call of Cthulhu” to the sober realism of “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930) and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.”

  I have not left myself much space for a discussion of Lovecraft’s place in American literature. His work was once dismissed because it appeared in the cheap pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s; nowadays he has become an icon in popular culture in part because his work appeared there. But Lovecraft’s involvement in the pulps was purely fortuitous and should not affect our evaluation of his status one way or the other: he was writing at a time when “genre” fiction in general, and weird fiction in particular, was slowly being banished from mainstream venues, and the pulps offered the only markets for those who wished to work in these literary realms. While most pulp fiction has rightly been condemned as being hackneyed, formulaic, and shoddily written, it should be acknowledged that a few writers rose above the mediocre average to produce outstanding works of their kind.

  The publication of Lovecraft’s letters, essays, and miscellany has provided us with the tools for a broader and more accurate gauge of his standing as a writer. This body of work reveals, firstly, that Lovecraft was a keen (if not especially original) thinker and an acute observer of his time, and, secondly, that he had the skill to embody his philosophical vision in tales that are meticulously crafted and endowed with a vitality of imagination rarely encountered in the entire range of literature. There may be those who banish all weird fiction into a kind of literary purgatory, but the achievements of Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, and Ramsey Campbell are making this increasingly difficult to do. Lovecraft himself became one of the most articulate spokesmen for the dignity and worth of the weird tale as an art form; and an utterance made early in his career may be all the defense that his chosen literary mode requires: The imaginative writer devotes himself to art in its most essential sense. . . . He is a painter of moods and mind-pictures—a capturer and amplifier of elusive dreams and fancies—a voyager into those unheard-of lands which are glimpsed through the veil of actuality but rarely, and only by the most sensitive. . . . Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty. (“In Defence of Dagon” [1921]; MW 148, 155)

  —S. T. JOSHI

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For assistance in the preparation of the text and notes I am grateful to Mike Ashley, Donald R. Burleson, Donovan K. Loucks, and especially David E. Schultz.

  S. T. J.

  SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

  PRIMARY

  Lovecraft’s tales, essays, poems, and letters have appeared in many editions, beginning with The Outsider and Others (1939). However, only certain recent editions can claim textual accuracy; other editions (including almost all current paperback editions in the United States and United Kingdom) contain numerous textual and typographical errors. Lovecraft’s fiction and “revisions” can be found in four volumes published by Arkham House (Sauk City, WI) under my editorship: The Dunwich Horror and Others (1984)

  At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (1985)

  Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1986)

  The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1989)

  Lovecraft’s poetry has now been definitively gathered in my edition of The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1999), superseding all previous editions.

  A large selection of Lovecraft’s essays can be found in my edition of Miscellaneous Writings (Arkham House, 1995). Among other volumes of essays are:

  Commonplace Book, ed. David E. Schultz (Necronomicon Press, 1987)

  The Conservative, ed. Marc A. Michaud (Necronomicon Press, 1976)

  To Quebec and the Stars, ed. L. Sprague de Camp (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1976)

  The major edition of Lovecraft’s letters is Selected Letters (Arkham House, 1965-76; 5 vols.), edited by August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, and James Turner. This edition, however, is not annotated or indexed, contains numerous textual errors, and presents nearly all letters in various degrees of abridgement. More recent, annotated editions of letters, edited by David E. Schultz and myself and published by Necronomicon Press, include: Letters to Henry Kuttner (1990)

  Letters to Richard F. Searight (1992)
br />   Letters to Robert Bloch (1993)

  Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett (1994)

  Schultz and I have also edited a volume largely culled from Lovecraft’s letters: Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000).

  SECONDARY

  Since about 1975, the literature on Lovecraft has been immense. Much biographical and critical work prior to that time is of little value, having been written largely by amateurs with little access to the full range of documentary evidence on Lovecraft (exceptions include the work of Fritz Leiber, Matthew H. Onderdonk, and George T. Wetzel). The following presents only a selection of the leading volumes on Lovecraft; see the notes for citations of additional articles.

  The standard bibliography is my H. P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981). A supplement, co-compiled by L. D. Blackmore and myself, covering the years 1980-84, was issued by Necronomicon Press in 1985. The books in Lovecraft’s library have been tallied in Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue (Necronomicon Press, 1980), compiled by Marc A. Michaud and myself. An expanded edition can be found on the Necronomicon Press website (www.necropress.com).