Blogcritics Comments on At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

Comment by Kyle

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:11:41 EDT

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!

Comment by Kyle

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:11:06 EDT

Comment by Leigh Blackmore

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:00:35 EDT

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

Comment by Fan

Thu, 6 Oct 2005 13:35:56 EDT

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.

Comment by HW Saxton

Tue, 7 Sep 2004 17:30:19 EDT

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.

Comment by Big Time Patriot

Tue, 7 Sep 2004 14:09:20 EDT

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.

Comment by Andrew Ian Dodge

Tue, 7 Sep 2004 09:21:20 EDT

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.