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A review by dillonrockrohr
Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird by H.P. Lovecraft
4.0
Good introduction to a set of genre precursors I’d previously not read much of. Standouts for me were:
Chambers, “The Repairer of Reputations”: funnier than I was expecting! And a couple of the more interesting characters I’ve found in horror stories, a genre in which character is often subordinated.
Shiel, “The House of Sound”: the way I was imagining it, one of the coolest set pieces in fiction.
Machen, “The White People”: the varieties of horror I enjoy the most—folk elements, more emphasis on unhuman fey, mystifying creatures whose strangeness shares the world with us, than on slashers, undead, or tentacled aliens from outer space—bear the imprint of this story, either through direct influence or through unwitting parallel inscription. I see some of this in Cynthia Ozick’s “The Pagan Rabbi,” one of my favorite short stories.
Blackwood, “The Willows”: Blackwood walked so Vandermeer’s “Area X” could run.
De La Mare, “Seaton’s Aunt”: great character studies, subtle peripheral horror.
Lovecraft, “The Colour out of Space”: a reread for me but I enjoyed it more this time, partly because of how filmic I realized it is. The narration guides the reader’s eye across a whole scene, a restless kind of immersion.
Chambers, “The Repairer of Reputations”: funnier than I was expecting! And a couple of the more interesting characters I’ve found in horror stories, a genre in which character is often subordinated.
Shiel, “The House of Sound”: the way I was imagining it, one of the coolest set pieces in fiction.
Machen, “The White People”: the varieties of horror I enjoy the most—folk elements, more emphasis on unhuman fey, mystifying creatures whose strangeness shares the world with us, than on slashers, undead, or tentacled aliens from outer space—bear the imprint of this story, either through direct influence or through unwitting parallel inscription. I see some of this in Cynthia Ozick’s “The Pagan Rabbi,” one of my favorite short stories.
Blackwood, “The Willows”: Blackwood walked so Vandermeer’s “Area X” could run.
De La Mare, “Seaton’s Aunt”: great character studies, subtle peripheral horror.
Lovecraft, “The Colour out of Space”: a reread for me but I enjoyed it more this time, partly because of how filmic I realized it is. The narration guides the reader’s eye across a whole scene, a restless kind of immersion.