At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
Published September 06, 2004
H.P. Lovecraft is too important a writer for a Horror fan like myself to put off reading. But I've always had the impression that his work was both dense and vague. But if At the Mountains of Madness is any indication, he's a more accessible writer than I had anticipated.
Nevertheless, Lovecraft does tend to be verbose, and his style is a little archaic, even for the 1930s. And there's simply no reason in the world for lines like this to exist:
These things had come from Mesozoic gymnosperms and conifers — especially Cretaceous cycads — and from fan palms and early angiosperms of plainly Tertiary date.
But the main problem with Lovecraft stems from what he's best known for: building tension while keeping the monsters offstage as much as possible. As a result, it feels like Lovecraft is trying to create emotions in the reader without actually delivering the goods. On one page alone he refers to the same "terrible mountains" as a "frightful line of peaks", "abhorred things", and "dreaded summits". Not only is he stretching things a little thin here, he doesn't actually prove anything; we're simply to take his word for it. This also causes another problem: eventually, he runs out of adjectives. During the last third of the novel, few pages go by in which something isn't described as either "decadent" or "blasphemous".
The novel starts out promising, with a largely unexplored Antarctica as the setting. A group of scientists discover a chain of mountains higher than the Himalayas. Beyond them is a dead city millions of years old. There a real sense of scale, both in time and space. But despite how short the novel is, some of it still feels like filler. There are pages upon pages of description, and a lot of unnecessary background is given for the species known as "the Old Ones". (Apparently At the Mountains of Madness fits in with the mythology Lovecraft created for many of his stories, as the Cthulhu and the Necronomicon are also mentioned.)
One of the most enjoyable things about At the Mountains of Madness is its old fashioned style of horror. But it probably should have been written as a short story, the format Lovecraft was best known for.
- At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
- Published: September 06, 2004
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- Section: Books
- Filed Under: Books: Horror
- Writer: Paul De Angelis
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I think it is exactly these long verbose sentences that contribute to the style of H.P. Lovecraft. You can imagine some early naturalist describing the first sighting of a rare yak in the same style that Lovecraft describes an evil monster from another dimension.
The sounds of the sentences are important also. I had never heard the word "eldritch" before reading Lovecraft and what a great example of a word that sounds like what it means.
But you get the same idea and it may actually work a little better in his short stories.
After reading this novella I can never
look at penguins in the same way again.
Only H.P. could take such a cute little
critter and make them objects of sheer
dread and terror.
I think it's important to remember that Lovecraft probably wasn't trying to sound modern. From what I've read he purposely used old spellings and archaic language in his works because he didn't like the modern forms. His sentance structure and vocabulary remind me me of late 19th century British writers, like Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Rider Haggard. Though his content was very different and he was considerably more verbose, his long-winded descriptions of landscape and technical matters, his word forms, and his condescension towards non-Anglo/Saxon are all typical of British writers from 1860 to around 1910. This probably also formed most of his reading growing up, so it's no wonder that he would imitate it somewhat.
Our difficulty in reading authors like Poe and Lovecraft in the 21st century may say more about our unfortunately dumbed-down society and the fact we can barely tolerate anything anymore unless it's broken into millisecond sound bites, than it does about Lovecraft's alleged "verbosity". In "At the Mountains of Madness", Lovecraft's intricately detailed references to Antarctic history and exploration, and especially the use of geolgical terms (the tale is narrated by Dyer, a geologist) combine to create a sense of authenticity from which the awe of the tale proceeds. It is a tale infinitely more carefully crafted than most of those which appeared alongside it in the pulps of its day, and indeed than most of those which appear in the weird fiction field today. While it is one of his longest tales forming a short novel of around 100 pages, it is a mere thin pamphlet compared to the doorstop novels served up by the likes of Stephen King - now if anyone wants to talk "verbose", have a look at most of King's novels, many of which in their padded way deserve to be pruned by an editor with a large hacksaw! Take any paragraph from "At the Mountains of Madness" and you'll see that despite appearing to use large words - well, OK he does use large words - Lovecraft is extremely concise, conveying nuances and shades of meaning with a skill all but unknown to most of today's purveyors of fast-food-horror writing. His history of the Old Ones given within the story conveys many of his deeper ideas about social organisation and politics, as well as art and the rise and fall of civilisation in the human world. It's one of his most mature works. Readers who enjoy it will also enjoy reading his "The Shadow Out of Time", another late and maturely written sf/horror crossover
I tend to agree with the critic as he says Lovecraft is prone to building up this prodigious suspense but the resolve seems somewhat "unmonumental." However, I enjoy reading his novels as he is a very verbose figure and pursues the indepth descriptions of his characters, plots, setting and atmosphere. I think the resolve to "At the Mountains of Madness" was somewhat weak, but that is only because the bar was set so high. You can tell by reading that this story is basically a fantasy that has been concieved within the min dof the author and is basic prose running off on unending tangents. I enjoy it but many others dont. I also enjoy the stories within " Dagon and other tales of the Macabre" as well.
If you havent read this novel, I would encourage it but be forwarned that you will encounter lots of description, no dialogue and monumental suspense! Lovecrafts works force us into confrentation with the unknown rather than forcing it into the background as we do within our basic human nature disregarding things we cannot fully understand. Who knows what race or species may be next to Inherit the Earth!
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At the risk of being a pedant, I would point out that the Cthulhu mythos are in fact not horror but rather dark fantasy. Lovecraft described himself as writing dark suspense.
One of the most interesting things about Lovecraft is that he encouraged fellow writers (Derleth, Blatty & Robert E. Howard) to take part in his pantheon. He was known to use creations of his fellow mythos writers (namely arcane tomes) in his own stories, as well as creating characters based on some of them. One could argue that Lovecraft was in fact an innovator in open-source writing. Writers continue to write mythos up until the present day.
I would agree that you probably could have started out with a better story as an example of Lovecraft's work. Might I recomend Call of Cthulhu.
If anyone here is wondering what I am going on about, I have written an Idiot's Guide to Lovecraft and his mythos. This Guide is hosted on a very good Mythos site called Temple of Dagon.