Where to start

I can see that being the case, yes. For those readers, perhaps beginning with other things might be the best choice... or this one may simply not be to their taste due to that factor....

I'd say my main complaint against the novel is the dialogue at the end, which is a bit too stagily melodramatic. It works fairly well when caught up in the reading, but on retrospect, it seems a bit too contrived; so I'd call that a weakness. Also, there is a bit in the section where Ward is explaining to his father the need for his procedures, which gets a bit too close to the pseudoscientific mystical babble of occultists of the time, that is just a bit jarring; it's only a line in the middle of a very tense portion of the book, but the glow fades for a brief moment there, and the line comes off as a bit trite and stretched... one of those times when HPL should have heeded his own dictum about avoiding the jargon of the professional occultist. (Of course, it can be seen -- and perhaps rightly -- as a bit of a swipe at such people; nevertheless, occurring at the point it does, it takes ever-so-slightly away from the tension and emotional impact of the scene. This, too, I would call a flaw.)
 
I too have heard a lot about Lovecraft. I'd like to read some of his works, but our library doesn't have them. Any tips short of actually buying them? I'm stone broke ya see...
 
Well, the link given above is no longer coming up, it would seem. However:

Index of /hp-lovecraft

This one has his fiction, some of his poetry, and several of his essays, including Supernatural Horror in Literature, complete with an index to works cited in that essay, with links to quite a few of them. However, when you're able, if you do like his work, I strongly suggest buying copies of the more recent editions through Penguin or Arkham House, as they include the authoritative texts... which are sometimes subtly, sometimes quite noticeably, different (At the Mountains of Madness, for example, has several sections where the text was badly mangled or entire sections were removed).

Nonetheless, this is a good way to introduce yourself to his work... especially if you don't have a way to find them at the library or buy them for the moment....
 
Woah, I just finished Call of Cthulhu, and gawsh, how could I have missed that after all these years? It's awesome. He has a way with words that can leave you feeling pretty disturbed. I guess that passes the more you read.
 
UnderTheOath ... it does not. It never goes away no matter how many of the stories you read and no matter how many times to read them.

You'll probably find yourself reading more and more and turning others who wrote like this. And at some point maybe the world will show you a whole new uneasy, disturbing face. It's quite addictive.
 
I'll agree with Nesa. Though the initial type of reaction may not be the same, the feeling of being disturbed tends to last, though it takes on different layers over the years. That's one of the great things about Lovecraft's work -- it continues to grow with you.

Oddly, though "The Nameless City" is a seriously flawed story in some respects (it's a bit top-heavy, for instance), it remains one of my personal favorites. For a different sort of thing from Lovecraft, you might try "The Quest of Iranon", "The Cats of Ulthar", or "The Silver Key" -- one is a story of pathos and the loss of ideals, one an odd sort of legend or folk-tale, and one a philosophical study of the nature of life and our ideas of beauty.

On the other hand, if you'd like more of his artificial pantheon, you might try "The Dunwich Horror", "The Whisperer in Darkness", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", or "The Shadow out of Time"; while his other approaches to the eerie themes can be seen in "The Music of Erich Zann", "The Tomb" (which is a surprisingly subtle story, actually), and perhaps his greatest tale, "The Colour out of Space", a study in regional horror that is almost an extended prose-poem in its use of language. For longer tales, you might try At the Mountains of Madness (a blending of mythos horror and science fiction) or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (a literary descendant of the Gothic via Hawthorne's haunted regionalism) or, if you like the Dunsanian vein in his writing (which seems to polarize people quite a lot of the time), The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
 
Ok thanks, I'll look into that.

And I loved Nameless City. I'm a sucker for ruined and abandoned buildings :p
 
I've just finished "Dunwich Horror" and, I must say, rather enjoyed it. I have heard it criticised on these boards quite often and also the notes in the book pointed out that it was criticised for having too simplistic a dichotomy between good and evil. However, I've got to admit that I don't really understand that criticism. I don't understand it because I don't see why it's such a bad thing?
 
I personally liked it Fried Egg. I know Joshi seems to not like it either for the reason you pointed out but I don't think the simplicity is a bad thing at all.

The story is tense and the tension and horror spiral along very well to the end. I like the way it ended too. Very reminiscent of the crucifixion.

Besides this is the tale for which the Old Gent got his single biggest cheque up to this point in his career. :)
 
The largest complaint about this one is that the simplistic dichotomy went entirely against the very philosophy Lovecraft was promoting and had even stated lay behind all his work. It's an anomaly in doing so. There have been arguments that Armitage (who really is a rather stereotyped character, even to the point of very pulpish stereotyped dialogue such as the "But what, in God's name, can we do?" -- something that would normally have had Lovecraft sizzling) is the archetypal Buffoon, and the Whateley twins are the actual heroes of the tale... a mythic reading that works quite well, but not one that can be said to be Lovecraft's intent, as his letters make it plain he sympathized with Armitage.

As for simplicity being a bad thing... it isn't, necessarily; but when it becomes a rather flat, two-dimensional "good-vs.-evil" battle that is nonetheless set up against a cosmic background... then it really doesn't fit, as these are human values, without any genuine meaning in a mechanistic universe such as HPL envisioned. So on this one I have to side with Joshi, though I did enjoy the story a great deal when I read it when I was younger. I'd still argue that it has a lot of strengths -- among them the point Nesa brought up (there's something similar in the reflection of the 23rd Psalm at the end of "The Shadow over Innsmouth"), and the way he brings that countryside to life; various of the traditions, and the atmosphere of the region; the passage from the Necronomicon; a lot of the characterization of Wilbur and the depiction of Wilbur at the library (especially given that he is not the horror of the title), etc. It's just that, with all this, such a "cowboys-'n'-Injuns" setup just seems a serious letdown in comparison.....
 
One further thought is that it did not seem to me so much of an anomaly when set against other work he has done. In "Call of Cthulu" for instance, humanity comes once again very close to being overwhelmed by "evil". It is only by chance that this menace is overcome, as it is in "Dunwich Horror" (William Whately failing in his attempt to secure the book he needed).

The organised defence that Armitage and his collegues manages to mount against the loosed beast has it's simularities with the way Dr. Willet finally overcomes Joseph Curwen in "the Case of Charles Dexter Ward".

That Armitage saw his task as a good vs. evil challenge doesn't really change the nature of the menace that always lurks and threatens humanity in Lovercraft's other works.
 
I'd say with "The Tomb" that it's one of those tales that grows with repeated readings; at least it did for me, as I began to realize how very subtly it's woven. Here was the first tale he'd written in nine years, and yet he manages to actually set up an irresolvable dichotomy about the narrator and the nature of reality there... not to mention capturing very skillfully the atmosphere and dialect of that particular period and location....
 
Am personally very fond of The Tomb. But then again I like all Lovecraft's tales for different reasons.

I love this one for the way it is written. For it's structure and slow build-up to the end. For the very detailed descriptions of the Tomb and it's surroundings. The words are almost hypnotic. I could see the gates and the lock and the heavy door. Feel myself lying in the dew and damp in the shadows watching that door.

I understood the joy he felt at knowing that in the end he too had a place in the tomb; the hurt and bewilderment at being taken away. And the very different sense of reality that he and his family had.
 
I've now finished "At The Mountains of Madness". Another monumental story by Lovecraft. I'll take a break before I read the last story in this collection ("The Thing On The Doorstep") even though it is comparatively short. I definitely need something lighter after reading that.

One of the things I find fascinating in reading his stories are his scientific views. i.e. which scientific theories he subscribes to and which were predominant in his time. HPL's clinging to the idea of the "ether", the moon having formed from a mass of land comming from the south pacific and his belief in (the then widely disregarded) theory of continental drift.

Another thing that struck me was that such a story as this could not be written in our time simply because we know that such humungous mountain ranges and antiquitous cities could not exist anywhere on earth; we would have spotted them from space.
 
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