HPL stories you just don't really care for

[CaliforniaSweeneyMan]

First of all, I'm new here, so... hello everyone.

Like most of HPL's stories, I think The Shadow out of Time is only really interesting due to the concept behind it—aliens recording the universe's past and future history through mental time-travel!

I enjoy The Shadow Out of Time because of the apocalyptic implications of that mental time-travel; that this Great Race of Yith survived by switching places with another race far in the future, so that they in fact never "defeat" the flying polyps... they just simply avoid them by projecting themselves into a time when they simply are gone, without any regard for why or how they're gone... and where does that leave us? To know that those cone-shaped Yithians existed on Earth, had their war with the polyps... that the cone-shaped beings weren't even the original Yithian form, and that the traces of those that destroyed them are still on Earth... the Yithians simply study us, and then move on, leaving us or whatever else to deal with the polyps. The cruelty of indifference... that's why I love that story because that - in my mind - is a horrifying notion of what will end up of humankind while these interstellar alien wars go on.

All of that said, I did have to re-read the story about three or four times, and I will still likely read it again as there are still some details that escape me. The Music of Erich Zann is one that I do find the concept interesting, though the actual story leaves me a little dissatisfied.

Patient readers will find that Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time" powerful imagination more than what it makes up for his stilted prose style

[fishy]

I find The Shadow Out of Time too damned LONG..kind of like At the Mountains of Madness. When i first started to read Lovecraft those two stories (+ The Outsider) were really a drag to read and not really scary. The two i mentioned first have gotten better over the years (the Outsider still suck) but are no way near the top of Lovecrafts stories according to me. But to each his own...

[Rev Tullos]

Tough call... There are a few of the little ones I don't really feel should count (The Street, Memory, etc) and most of the Dream Cycle stories turn me off.  Of the big names I have to agree that Shadow out of Time disappointed me. I will have to agree that Smokestack Jones' reading of The Picture in the House probably saved that story for me.  As for Arthur Jermyn, since I stumbled on HPL accidentally, this was the first story I read.  I'll admit it didn't really impress me but I kept going (Statement of Randolph Carter was #2, just bad luck I guess...).  After becoming infatuated with HPL I kinda got a soft spot for old Arthur since it was my first to read.

[TheFolklorist]

I'm also going to throw in with those who don't care for "The Shadow Out of Time." Not only does it have the worst title of any of Lovecraft's major works, its just rather boring. The idea of the Yithians, a race of cosmic time traversing librarians, is cool and all but the story itself falls flat. Perhaps my biggest problem with this story is that it's just plain derivative of Lovecraft's earlier better works.

"Shadow" borrows the archeological expedition uncovering a lost alien civilization filled with amorphous monsters from "At the Mountains of Madness", the man discovering his own horrible connection with said aliens from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and the whole dream/nightmare/vision angle from "The Call of Cthulhu". Not to mention the fact that S.T. Joshi has noted that Lovecraft borrowed other ideas for the story from the film Berkeley Square which he watch repeatedly in 1933 as well as various pulp stories publish in the 20s.

For Christmas my friends got me all of the Dark Adventure Radio Theater CDs from the HPLHS and I just got done listening to "The Shadow Out of Time" which I saved for last because it was my least favorite story. I thought that maybe their take on this story would make me feel differently but it didn't which is why I'm posting this now.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who doesn't enjoy this story. I also agree that "At the Mountains of Madness" is long and dry but it is nonetheless a solid story and the HPLHS radio drama of it is very good as hopefully will be del Toro's upcoming film.

           

[ahtzib]

I'm not going to go on about disliking the nearly universally disliked stories, usually his early 1920s stuff.

I generally just don't like the dream stuff. As a kid, I didn't like it because it didn't fit in with the gribbly monsters stuff. Now, I still don't like it. The podcast has done about as well as anyone as in making me get something out of these stories, but I just don't like them, even if there are things I appreciate more now.

I'm going to concur with a number of posters here in mildly disliking "The Shadow Out of Time." It retreads ground already trod by HPL in "Innsmouth" and Mountains, as well as Charles Dexter Ward with the "what wizardly weirdness was my replacement up to?" business in the middle of the tale. Like the other detractors, the ending seems in need of a serious new draft, as parts of it are just all over the place and edge close to the limits of the suspension of disbelief (which otherwise had held up fine), mostly for the sake of having a big scare in the end. Shoving a shoggoth chase into the end of SoT just didn't help matters. It's not an awful tale by any stretch, but it's not one of my favorites.

I'm going to stand up for three stories, sort of, that are probably on the conventional "this sucks" list

The first is one I do not think is good, but want to mention anyway. "The Horror at Red Hook." It's a really problematic story on its own, never mind the ignorance and racism (and not just the general racism against immigrants, but the very specific ignorant bigotry against the Yezidis, something HPL seems to have picked up from Chambers, but then helped spawn about a dozen pulp tales after that time smearing them for their poorly understood beliefs. The Yezidis still deal with fears about "devil worship," though I don't blame HPL for that, he just repeated them for another audience). The story infamously is not that well researched, pulling its scary mumbo jumbo out of the Encyclopedia Britannica. BUT, the story is very interesting as to my mind it is when you can see HPL shifting from his earlier Poe and Dunsany style tales, and is the first proto-glimmerings of what becomes his Cthulhu Mythos. Its main inspiration is the idea coming from Margaret Murray about the witch cult. Here, it's shit, and I suspect part of the reasons being that he was more concerned about using the story to make money (by starting an occult detective series of his own, a failed endeavor), and because he used the story to spill his vitriol about NYC and the wrongs he felt while living there. When Lovecraft takes the same basic concept of a worldwide occult conspiracy and their entanglements with students of mythology and culture getting out of their depth, and spices it with geology (the earthquake, sunken/moving continents, deep time) and a blend of Fort and theosophy, rather than racism and conservatism, he strikes gold with "The Call of Cthulhu."

The other two are "The Hound" and "Herbert West." I hated the Hound when I was young, because the protagonists were so ridiculous. But if read alongside Herbert West, you realize that both of these have a deep comic sense. The decadents in "The Hound" are absurd, and I suspect purposely so. Likewise, "Herbert West" was written for a comedy magazine, and indeed the stories generally each have at least one solid punchline. They're not grand philosophical statements, but they're simply fun.

[Genus Unknown]

Herbert West on the conventional "this sucks" list? I thought it was one of his more popular stories.

Aside from that, and the dream stuff (which I'm rather fond of) I agree with everything you said.

[ahtzib]

I can't remember more than a handful of discussions of "Herbert West" that didn't lambast it as quasi-juvenile drek. I instead get the feeling that it's reputation is enhanced for a lot of more casual fans by the Stuart Gordon film, exacerbated by its absence from Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, which from personal observation and hearing from various fans, I assume was the most popular Lovecraft from the early 1980s to about 2000 or so, until they went into public domain and before the various Joshi annotated versions.

[Kryptych]

Honestly, I have to say that while the "dream" stories are not my favorites, I enjoy them FAR more than Tolkien. No disrespect to Tolkien fans - I enjoyed reading his works when I was younger, but have found them rather meandering as I've grown up... and not just because of the pages of elf-song and the great lengths to which Tolkien tries to create Middle Earth to the point of having maps, illustrations, and long pages of description. I tend to think that Lovecraft's more atmospheric and "dreamy" settings and "less is more" descriptive style allows the reader's imagination to work harder. I think that's why most artists' depictions of Lovecraft's creatures and worlds are so wildly different (like that line from The Horror at Martin's Beach - "...no two accounts agree" or "...contains the most amazing discrepancies"), while most that I see of Tolkien tend to look... well, mostly the same.
Plus, as Mr. Fifer states that there is an almost "nerdy payoff" at reading The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and knowing all the background from having read all of the previous smaller stories... it all culminates, I think, in a nice way with a big Wizard of Oz/Lord of the Rings-style fantasy adventure.
For me, the "dream" stories are something to return to every rare once in awhile for a helping of concise fantasy, so while I don't really care for them in the scope of Lovecraft's oeuvre, especially since I'm more interested in the sense of cosmic horror, I appreciate them for what they are.

[Unruhe]

I have to agree with "Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn". I just hate monkeys and apes.

The dream cycle stuff is next on the list, but I think you have to be in the mood for abstract horror to enjoy them.

I recently noticed all my favorites have something to do with either occult tomes, or strange cultists . ..or both.

[Miskatonic Philologus]

I'm interested to know if anyone REALLY liked The Moon-Bog? For me, that was one of those stories that just sort of went nowhere.

[Bob Lovecraft]

I liked the Moon Bog, but to say I REALLY liked it would be a stretch. It always seemed to me to be in the same vein as The Rats in the Walls and The Hound. I liked those stories, but did't love them, and they all had the european "Heathcliff on the moors" feel to them.

Now the one I really hate has to be Kadath. That is, hands down, the crappiest of all of lovecraft's writings, and I am including all of the early mytho-historical garbage like Sarnath. I know that Kadath was never meant to be released, and I certainly see how it was a rough draft that mainly just got down the ideas. That having been said, I think this explanation should always preface the publication of Kadath simply to let the reader know what it was and how it was always meant to be better.

Bob

[Miskatonic Philologus]

I liked the Moon Bog, but to say I REALLY liked it would be a stretch. It always seemed to me to be in the same vein as The Rats in the Walls and The Hound. I liked those stories, but did't love them, and they all had the european "Heathcliff on the moors" feel to them.

Bob

Yes, I think that Bog has the same "feel" as Rats and Hound. To me, that group, and a few others, are sort of bland -they are just not enough of what they aspire to be (i.e., horror).

[Bob Lovecraft]

well I can certainly see that. I like those stories more for the atmosphere than the horror. Of course, I do still want to own my own castle, but I guess that is neither here nor there.

Bob

[ahtzib]

I really dislike "The Moon-Bog," because of all the shoehorned in Classical Greek mumbo-jumbo. It's a story set in frikkin Ireland written for a frikkin St. Patrick's Day event. Yeah, HPL may have been able to cherry pick some myth, but that aspect of it, in addition to being longwinded, comes off as lazy and jerkish.

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

I'm interested to know if anyone REALLY liked The Moon-Bog? For me, that was one of those stories that just sort of went nowhere.

I liked the idea and atmosphere, like with "The Hound" (unlike others, I really do enjoy "Rats"). But I think "The Doom that Came to Sarnath" did it better. Those two feel to me much like the same story.