#44 The Dreams in the Witch House- Lovecraft

#44 The Dreams in the Witch House- Lovecraft

The size and pace of this one reads more like a Novella, and is likely one of the longer short stories I’ll tackle for this project.  However, in reading H.P Lovecraft’s Omnibus 1 in its entirety, I’ve also read through a few of his mid-sized, namely At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of John Dexter Ward.  So far, I’ve enjoyed his shorter works.   All his writing has been artful, talented story telling, but the longer works seem to be struggling to accomplish a certain mood or tension that I think could be accomplished in half the space.

In Dreams in the Witch House I think he’s found a good balance and the pacing was perfect.  Once again I immensely enjoyed his style of prose.  Its amazing that as I go through these collections, that someone like Lovecraft can exist at the same period as Hemingway, Faulkner, Jack London, etc.  I guess its always the same with writers of off-beat topics.  Genre writers, pulp authors have the freedom to break convention.

Lovecraft is the king of the macabre and hoary, the mysterious and the grotesque.  But in Dreams, he shows you exactly how ahead of his time he was. This thriller is as much a study in quantum physics as it is a gory horror tale.  Gilliam, our protagonist, tracks down a story of a 17^th century witch, Keziah, as well as a foul hybrid creature haunting this town. This “white fanged fury thing” that “nuzzled people curiously in the black hours before dawn" is a local folk tale born of hyperbole and fear.  It is a cross between a rat, a dog, and a human.  They name it Brown Jenkins. 

As Gilliam increases his connection to these horrors through dreams, “sharpest dreams which assailed him just before he dropped into the fullest depths of sleep”, he finds himself straddling special dimensions, “perhaps one of infinite remoteness.”  He taps into knowledge heretofore only the likes of Plank and Einstein held.  Sudden understanding of Riemannian Equations and the connection of the fourth dimension.   I’m amazed that these thought experiments played out here nearly 100 years ago are still being discussed among quantum physicists today. 

Whether these dreams lead to actual space space-time bending or is just a mind-trick consequence of his known somnambulism, is left to us, the reader to decide. 

Lovecraft liberally references something called the Necronomicon, it’s a grimoire, a book of magic he invents himself that has since taken on a life of its own within the genre. 

Notable Passage:  “Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension.”

Rating: 8-7-7-8 Total= 30 

#27- The Silver Key- HP Lovecraft

#27 The Silver Key- H.P. Lovecraft

This wonderful story by Lovecraft, narrated as many of his tales are, by the fictitious occultist Randolph Carter.  Carter is either caught in or waking up from a deep dream state (the details of his dreams while interesting are only important if you read the longer companion piece).  He waxes philosophic about the differences between reality and imagination and within those realms truth and falsehoods.  What’s more real, earthly myths or ethereal dreams?

Carter “could not escape from the delusion that life has a meaning apart from that which men dream into it.”

Many believe that there is a level of reality I dreams that science has yet to adequately explore.  In fact our brains react identically to dreaming of an image and actually seeing that image. If our brains believe what we see in our dreams is as real as what we see with our eyes, then why can’t we visit, in our dreams, the past or worlds in other dimensions?  Why cant dreams be just as tangible as our awakened experiences?  And to true dreamers, reality is actually more false and hollow than the “reality” of our nightly nocturnal wanderings…“with the dreams fading under the ridicule of the age he could not believe in anything…”

According to Randolph Carter, all we need to provide is context, as no thought or idea can exist in an absolute vacuum. “…even humor is empty in a mindless universe devoid of any true standard of consistency or inconsistency”

As always Lovecraft’s use of language is intoxicating and the philosophical questions he poses are far more interesting to me than some stories steeped in uncreative realism or the mundane slices-of-life many authors present as fiction.

What better way to describe Lovecraft’s style than to use his own description:

“…he cultivated deliberate illusion, and dabbled in the notions of the bizarre and the eccentric as an antidote for the commonplace.”

Notable Passages: “Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings.”

 “calm lasting beauty comes only in dream, and this solace the world had thrown away when in its worship of the real it threw away the secrets of childhood and innocence.” 

Rating: 8-9-8-8

#3 The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)- H.P Lovecraft

As onomatopoeia relates to the sounds of words, the picture of H.P. Lovecraft above relates to his writing.  Just look at that intense boring darkness.  Living contemporarily with Bela Lugosi, it’s a waste of a face that he did not become a star of black and white horror movies.  

I guess we’ll have to settle for his writing.  Of all the authors in my stack for this project, Lovecraft is the one I was most curious about.  Wow, what a style! Known as a master of horror, existing in the genre somewhere between Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King (acknowledged as a huge influence on the latter), Lovecraft was virtually unknown during his time, being relegated to pulp printings and mostly forgotten but for the hundreds of authors who found inspiration in the world of his dark themes.

This short story is one a four using John Carter as the narrator.   Here his “Statement” is a monologue spoken to interrogators after the mysterious disappearance of his friend and partner. It’s essentially a statement to the Police.  Carter relates a harrowing account of a late-night grave digging session presumably to further the odd and ungodly studies of the deceased. 

What they uncover is a monster too hideous to describe.  Cater lures in the mind of the listener but leaves the monster’s details to your own imagination by relating that “…It’s too utterly beyond thought…no man could know it and live…” and so Carter’s companion dies, the monster is left trapped, alive, and lurking in the unholy sepulcher.  Carter is spared to answer the unanswerable.

The writing is so rich and satisfying.  I could read his writing style for hours with or without plot.  I mean, have you ever seen a paring of words such as “effluence of miasmal gases?” Don’t you think your life would be more exciting with more writing of this kind?

I Loved it, and cant wait to read more. Unfortunately most of Lovecraft’s works are longer novellas, or full works.  I’ll manage to get a few in this year I’m sure, but probably only a couple of the shorter stories for this blog.

Notable Passages: As I stated above, the story was packed with great passages. Here are two of my favorites:

 “Vision or nightmare it may have been – vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was – yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after we left the sight of men.”

“It was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with the vague stench with my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone”

Rating: 8-9-8-7 Total= 32