A True Master
Since moving to Boro Park, I’ve been reading at an accelerated rate, as I need something to do on the trains to and from work, and also something to read on the job while I’m in Long Island City on the weekends. I got a library card for the local library here in Brooklyn, but I found that I was quickly exhausting the possibilities in terms of what I was interested in there. It’s a small branch, and while I guess I could have tried to order some of the specific titles I’ve been looking for, instead, this past week I went to the Strand, the most excellent bookstore in Manhattan, boasting eight miles of books, and bought some of the ones I wanted. Among them I purchased two books of short stories by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. I’d been meaning to get my hands on some of his work for some time, and now that I’m into one of them, I find his writing to be every bit as good as I was expecting. Better, actually.
Lovecraft, who died early in the twentieth century at the age of forty-three, reads like a (relatively) modern Edgar Allan Poe. Like so many other masters of their craft, he did not achieve significant financial success or recognition in his life, instead living in more or less abject poverty even while churning out some of the most noteworthy, and indeed, disturbing horror fiction anyone but his idol, Poe, ever produced. He never wrote a novel, restricting his vision to short stories, but since I am an avid admirer of the short story form, I have nothing but respect for him despite that. His stories, hideously claustrophobic, Gothic, and infused with his many bizarre phobias, plumb the depths of what scares and repels us with such seeming ease that the antiquated language does little to lessen the effect of the terror he is trying to convey; in fact, if anything, it increases it. It doesn’t get much better than this, in terms of horror writing, as the imaginative forces at work in these stories are no less than jaw dropping. As a fellow writer, it is fitting that I both admire and envy this man his abilities simultaneously, as I see in the work of so many others since his death echoes of the techniques he either invented or perfected. I wish that I could write like this, I can’t deny it, but there’s a flip side of it, too. Like Poe, the only way to conjure up such horrors out of the deep, subterranean depths of the human experience is to be a little touched yourself, or, in the case of Lovecraft, to be so deranged as to seem a danger to yourself and others. Truly, few have an imagination like this, and you can’t help but wonder what voices were speaking to this man; I’d never wish to hear them. It makes a “horror” writer like Stephen King seem such a rank amateur, though. He is a novice, and can never hope to be more than that, even though he remains a writer I enjoy; Lovecraft is a master. I’m very much looking forward to reading the rest of this collection I’m working on, and getting started on the other.
In other news, I’m in the process of compiling the material for “The Great Divide,” my new collection of stories, fragments, and oddments that hopefully I’ll be posting here on the website around the end of next month. As promised, it will feature quite a bit of rarely and never before seen material, and you’ll be able to check it out absolutely free of charge…lucky you. I’ll have further updates as the process moves along. That’s all for now, kids. Stay warm.