Extollager
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2010
- Messages
- 9,205
I'm rereading At the Mountains of Madness. It strikes me that, next to this, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and that late story, The Shadow Out of Time, Lovecraft wrote no indispensable stories. They may be entertaining, but next to these they are, manifestly, not important. One might wonder if Lovecraft hadn't pretty much exhausted for himself the value of what we casually call the Cthulhu Mythos.
He died. People have gone on writing Mythos stories -- to call them that for convenience's sake -- and these may be intriguing, entertaining, or perhaps even charming. I'm saying that Lovecraft set a very high bar for the serious weird tale with Mountains and the two Shadow stories by late in his life, and his remaining output suggests that he wouldn't have written Mythos stories worthy to stand with them had he lived to write for another 25 years. I'm further suggesting that those heights haven't -- so far as I [note well the qualification] am aware -- been reached any time since. The Mythos then may be regarded, in a sense, as far as a serious literary phenomenon is concerned, as a thing of the 1920s-30s, at least as regards the pinnacle of achievement.
I'm throwing this out for discussion and debate if it seems worthwhile.
The analogy might be with, say, baroque music. A composer today could still compose a very agreeable work that in every performable way sounded like a baroque work. But no one expects him or her to write something that adds significantly to what Bach achieved.
Thoughts?
He died. People have gone on writing Mythos stories -- to call them that for convenience's sake -- and these may be intriguing, entertaining, or perhaps even charming. I'm saying that Lovecraft set a very high bar for the serious weird tale with Mountains and the two Shadow stories by late in his life, and his remaining output suggests that he wouldn't have written Mythos stories worthy to stand with them had he lived to write for another 25 years. I'm further suggesting that those heights haven't -- so far as I [note well the qualification] am aware -- been reached any time since. The Mythos then may be regarded, in a sense, as far as a serious literary phenomenon is concerned, as a thing of the 1920s-30s, at least as regards the pinnacle of achievement.
I'm throwing this out for discussion and debate if it seems worthwhile.
The analogy might be with, say, baroque music. A composer today could still compose a very agreeable work that in every performable way sounded like a baroque work. But no one expects him or her to write something that adds significantly to what Bach achieved.
Thoughts?