Mysterious author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) reviews a new anthology of the stories of the uncanny and equally mysterious H.P. Lovecraft. At first somewhat put off, Handler begins to realize the strange and compelling power of these idiosyncratic tales.
One hysterical narrator is off-putting; four is a running gag; but 22 is something else entirely, and over the course of this collection -- well chosen by Peter Straub -- Lovecraft's credo becomes quite clear. Arguably, the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind isn't fear. The first emotional state, if you consult the Bible, appears to be loneliness. After a day naming the animals, Adam is willing to give up one of his brand-new ribs for a little companionship, and the heroes of Lovecraft stories are similarly bereft.If you spend enough time in Lovecraft's lonely landscapes, fear really does develop: not the fear that you will come across unearthly creatures, but the fear that you will come across little else. And what first seems horridly overdone accumulates a creepy minimalism. Taken as a whole, Lovecraft's work exhibits a hopeless isolation not unlike that of Samuel Beckett: lonely man after lonely man, wandering aimlessly through a shadowy city or holing up in rural emptiness, pursuing unspeakable secrets or being pursued by secret unspeakables, all to little avail and to no comfort. There is something funny about this -- in small doses. But by the end of this collection, one does not hear giggling so much as the echoes of those giggles as they vanish into the ether -- lonely, desperate and, yes, very, very scary.
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Buy the book: H.P. Lovecraft - Tales (Library of America)
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