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Post by cortwilliams on Oct 8, 2012 11:22:36 GMT -6
I'm sure this topic has been posted before, but what the heck: What is your favorite Lovecraft story? For me, the honor has to go to "The Colour Out of Space." Lovecraft referred to it as "as an atmospheric study rather than as a tale", and I think that it was quite successful in this regard-The slow build of the tension and the subtle vagueness in describing the abnormally chromatic entity(ies) give this story a haunting power.
Hail Satanis! Cort
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Post by sin on Oct 8, 2012 16:11:26 GMT -6
So many favorites, its hard to choose just one:
At the Mountains of Madness The Call of Cthulhu Shadow Over Insmouth The Beast in the Cave Polaris The Cats of Ulthar The Music of Erich Zann
Those are my top faves, but I have more!
CS
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Post by cortwilliams on Oct 8, 2012 16:55:39 GMT -6
Ah yes! "At the Mountains of Madness" would be #2 for me, I think. Past that, it gets harder to choose.
Hail Satanis! Cort
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Post by sin on Oct 10, 2012 7:40:34 GMT -6
Re-Animator! I'll admit, I had a new found love for this story when it starred Jeffery Combs in the movie edition (1985). I can think of no other Herbert West! When he narrated the audio edition, I just HAD to have it.
Hell, I even liked Beyond Re-Animator. It was campy, but it managed to capture that eerie feeling of West escaping to the shadows to continue his research.
It always reminded me of the hoakie medical experiments to find the soul, as if you cracked a corpse like a nut and could extract it as something tangible. The idea of injecting that into dead meat and expecting it to be 'whole' is the thinking of the quintessential mad scientist. I really do think it will be our undoing...Mad science!
hehe
CS
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2013 1:30:06 GMT -6
My favorite story is usually a flavor of the month deal, currently being Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Tied for second, if not a static first, would be The Whisperer in Darkness, At the Mountains of Madness, and The Haunter of the Dark. The way I interpret Lovecraft stories has changed since I saw the Fear of the Unknown documentary, and I almost wish I could unwatch it... But I digress.
I usually have an audiobook going as I fall asleep or just whenever I've got some free time. I try to work in a new story every day or two until I have a general knowledge of most - all of his works, but some stories catch my attention so much that I just have to keep rereading them!
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Post by Timotheus Prophet of Darkness on Feb 11, 2013 12:28:14 GMT -6
For me it is Dreams in the Witchhouse
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Post by I AM the Way on Feb 16, 2013 17:48:50 GMT -6
Please, keep digressing. I still have yet to watch Fear of the Unknown. Why did it change your interpretation of certain HPL stories?
VS
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Post by Kai'zen on Feb 17, 2013 18:48:11 GMT -6
I'm also interested. Explain?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2013 22:13:09 GMT -6
I'm sorry to reply so late, but I've been overburdened by melancholy, lethargy and scholastics. As for the video, my judgement hasn't been completely revamped, but I'm just a bit more enlightened, assuming all information in the video is completely accurate. When I first read Lovecraftian work, his use of adjectives really did stand out to me. I honestly liked the way he would help paint an image in the viewer's head, but the way he described many minorities was overly hostile. I saw this and tried my best to deny the general idea that it could be backed by racial intolerance, but the documentary proved it. I could get past the fact that this was more accepted in Lovecraft's time, but his upbringing was a pretty big factor and he couldn't really help that. Even though he moved past it, it still played a part in quite a few stories. That and the comment (I think it was Guillermo del Toro's) about Cthulhu stemming from Lovecraft's fear of the female genitalia and lack of sexual exposure in general. There was much more praise of Lovecraft than I might make it seem like, but I wasn't prepared for a lot of what I heard lol. I guess that saying it made me interpret his works differently at all could be an overstatement, but it did make me think twice about what undertones might be present in his, or any author's work. And if this sounds confusing or too heavily padded then I'm sorry but I typed up a much better response, but I guess the iPhone refreshed the page and everything got wiped. Thanks for your time! And I'm sorry if this wasn't as interesting as I sounded in my last message. And damn, I just started reading the Randolph Carter saga starting from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and so far I'm loving it! I might go as far to say that it's definitely up there on my list of top Lovecraftian works, which will maintain relevance to the original question, so it all works out in the end! Unlike in a lot of stories I've read lately like the Rats in the Walls and The Alchemist, and basically all of his stories
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Post by I AM the Way on Feb 22, 2013 22:43:05 GMT -6
Thanks for clarifying.
Yeah, the racism and prejudice is unfortunate, but pretty common for the time; not at all surprising if one considers Lovecraft's upbringing and peculiar over-sensitivity. However, the most interesting and advanced (from a certain perspective) characters in his stories are usually of mixed race or totally non-Caucasian (i.e. the worshipers of Dread Cthulhu).
The unconscious sexuality in his work is also a fascinating idiosyncrasy.
VS
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Post by erwyn on Mar 15, 2013 10:11:19 GMT -6
The racism is indeed unfortunate, but it doesn't make his writings any less fantastic. They are the expressions of a man who no longer fitted in his own time. A Victorian gentleman and Puritan, and taking that perspective it is no wonder that the man would become racist. He was absolutely convinced of the anglo saxon man's moral superiority to others. This isn't weird considering it was a time in which every group of cultural immigrants fended for their own kin.
Add to that the fact that he lived for a while in Brooklyn during the roaring 20's, a time in which consumerism started to flourish and the western world grew increasingly liberal. It wasn't a place in time for a man who valued things like purity fidelity and decency.
(If anyone has been following The Boardwalk Empire, I imagine Lovecraft to have been somewhat like the character Van Alden)
He saw the world he valued crumbling all around him, and I find it absolutely fascinating that he managed to capture this together with a fear of the unknown and the absolute cosmological insignificance of mankind in his stories. (at least that is what I read in to them)
And what is racism other than a fear for people whose culture you cannot understand, and an inability to cope with that?
Considering how culturally diverse the world has become I guess there may have never been a better time for a Cult of Cthulhu (rather than a cult of Lovecraft) than now. Embracing these differences, and celebrating our power to, simultaneously encouraging us to carve out and walk our own paths in life.
Oh, and my favorite story is The Dunwich Horror.
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SM
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Post by SM on Apr 22, 2013 21:14:05 GMT -6
Well I do have to say that Dreams in the Witch house is my favorite so far. I have not read many other of his books yet and still might change my mind. Ia Ia Cthulhu Ftagin!!
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