Lovecraft read Frankenstein, right?

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

I'm listening to it as an audiobook. And oh my elder gods it sounds like Lovecraft. Or, since Lovecraft was later, he sounds like her. The narrator talks about unnameable, indescribable things. Ancient days and imaginary evils. He even faints and falls into a long and sad illness.

Unfortunately I don't really like it. But I want to know the proper story. *sigh*

[osyrisdiamond]

I'm listening to it as an audiobook. And oh my elder gods it sounds like Lovecraft. Or, since Lovecraft was later, he sounds like her. The narrator talks about unnameable, indescribable things. Ancient days and imaginary evils. He even faints and falls into a long and sad illness.

Unfortunately I don't really like it. But I want to know the proper story. *sigh*

Can't say if he did, though I would be more surprised to find that he did not. I like Frankenstein and especially the monster ("Adam" as the author called him). Victor himself is a dick and someone I grew to hate. Looking back on it, it is very Lovecraftian down to the bitter ending... or as you point out, Lovecraft is very Shellian.

[Jack]

[William Godwin's] daughter, the wife of [Percy Bysshe] Shelley, was much more successful; and her inimitable Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is one of the horror-classics of all time. Composed in competition with her husband, Lord Byron, and Dr. John William Polidori in an effort to prove supremacy in horror-making, Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein was the only one of the rival narratives to be brought to an elaborate completion; and criticism has failed to prove that the best parts are due to Shelley rather than to her. The novel, somewhat tinged but scarcely marred by moral didacticism, tells of the artificial human being moulded from charnel fragments by Victor Frankenstein, a young Swiss medical student. Created by its designer "in the mad pride of intellectuality", the monster possesses full intelligence but owns a hideously loathsome form. It is rejected by mankind, becomes embittered, and at length begins the successive murder of all whom young Frankenstein loves best, friends and family. It demand that Frankenstein create a wife for it; and when the student finally refuses in horror lest the world be populated with such monsters, it departs with a hideous threat 'to be with him on his wedding night'. Upon that night the bride is strangled, and from that time on Frankenstein hunts down the monster, even into the wastes of the Arctic. In the end, whilst seeking shelter on the ship of the man who tells the story, Frankenstein himself is killed by the shocking object of his search and creation of his presumptuous pride. Some of the scenes in Frankenstein are unforgettable, as when the newly animated monster enters its creator's room, parts the curtains of his bed, and gazes at him in the yellow moonlight with water eyes--"if eyes they may be called". Mrs. Shelley wrote other novels, including the fairly notable Last Man; but never duplicated the success of her first effort. It has the true touch of cosmic fear, no matter how much the movement may lag in places. Dr. Polidori developed his competing idea as a long short story, The Vampyre; in which we behold a suave villain of the true Gothic or Byronic type, and encounter some excellent passages of stark fright, including a terrible nocturnal experience in a shunned Grecian wood.

[TransconaSlim]

Mary Shelley ran off with Percy Bysshe Shelley against the will of her father William Godwin.  Someone once commented that that proves the supremacy of poets over political theorists. 

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

Thanks, Jack! I'd hoped he wrote something about it.

[Jack]

Supernatural Horror in Literature is pretty long (it's a little longer than The Shadow Out of Time), but if you like Lovecraft you'll probably like most of the he talks about. I recommend it.

Was that audiobook any good? Was it from Librivox or somewhere else? I haven't read Frankenstein in a while—so long ago that I can't even remember if I liked it or not.

[osyrisdiamond]

Supernatural Horror in Literature is pretty long (it's a little longer than The Shadow Out of Time), but if you like Lovecraft you'll probably like most of the he talks about. I recommend it.

Was that audiobook any good? Was it from Librivox or somewhere else? I haven't read Frankenstein in a while—so long ago that I can't even remember if I liked it or not.

Lit2Go has a very good reading of Franktenstein. I've not heard the Librevox version myself but methinks I would still enjoy the Lit2Go version better.

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

I'm listening to the Recorded Books version (free download through my library system). I'm not entirely on board with the book/writing, but I think the reader himself is fine. It might be George Guidall or however he spells it.

[osyrisdiamond]

I'm listening to the Recorded Books version (free download through my library system). I'm not entirely on board with the book/writing, but I think the reader himself is fine. It might be George Guidall or however he spells it.

What bothers me about Frankenstein is Victor's continual bitching about how evil "Adam" is and how he must destroy him. Outside the end of the book, where "Adam" takes his revenge, the only other part of the book I really enjoyed was "Adam's" account of his first years of life. Victor is too self-rightous and self-centered, narrow-minded and egotistical. Most of his narration was nothing more than self-pity whining mixed with emo laments and excuses for his past and their consequences. While I admit "Adam" is not without blame, Victor only pays lip service to his own guilt, which in my opinion is the greater guilt, and instead of truly taking the sins onto his back places them on his creation. This is rather annoying and leaves an unsatisfied if not angered feeling towards the protagonist. Not sure if that is what Shelly wanted, but I'm inclined to think it might have been.

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

Or him going on about how he's suffering worse than the poor girl who gets hanged after being unjustly convicted of a crime Adam committed. No, no you're not suffering worse. She's going to die. Also, you keep going on about how you want to save her and you'd do anything to save her. Well why don't at least give it a shot? What's the worse that could happen, you try and fail?

[osyrisdiamond]

Or him going on about how he's suffering worse than the poor girl who gets hanged after being unjustly convicted of a crime Adam committed. No, no you're not suffering worse. She's going to die. Also, you keep going on about how you want to save her and you'd do anything to save her. Well why don't at least give it a shot? What's the worse that could happen, you try and fail?

Yeah, that got me, too. Even if they deemed him insane or at least delusional or even just biased in opinion, at least he could say I told the truth and they still killed her; verses saying, "I wanted to but could not because then I would expose myself for the prick and rat bastard that I am." If Shelly really wanted people to turn on the protagonist and support the antagonist, methinks that is when the readers realizes who is the worse of two evils.

[Bob Lovecraft]

Well yeah, that was probably the point all along. When it comes down to it, that is the overall theme of the book: man is vain and petty and anything he creates will eventually be corrupted. So yeah, Victor was a dick.

Bob