Tales (2005) By H.P. Lovecraft

 

Several years ago, I read a short story by H.P. Lovecraft that I liked, then bought a collection of his works published by the Library of America titled Tales but never got around to reading it. More recently I saw the horror film The Reanimator, based on the one of Lovecraft’s early works, which has reawakened my interest. Lovecraft is renowned for his horror stories, and as the “father” of a sci-fi genre known as the Cthulu Mythologies.

The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Normally I’m a stickler about reading things in their written sequence, which has not been the case with my recent return to his short stories. The first should have been The Call of the Cthulu because it lays the groundwork for future works. In it, a young man narrates how he inherited the papers of his late granduncle, a professor who was a well-known authority on ancient inscriptions. With the papers is a locked box, the only item which was locked.

Inside is a document titled “Cthulhu Cult” and a mysterious looking clay-like icon with an undecipherable inscription, and an array of newspaper cutting about strange objects, secret societies and of recurrent dreams from around the world. [This was quaint, I’m actually old enough to remember newspaper “cutting services,” which along with library card catalogs died with Google and Wikipedia).

The nephew will spend the rest of the story pursuing the stories and having the icon analyzed – it is not an element known to man. What he discovers is an ancient civilization from another planet which battled and lost to another civilization, then fell to the Earth. It has been submerged under the sea, occasionally rising to the surface with its members then terrorizing people it comes across.

 The Color Out of Space (1927)

In a small farming community west of Arkham (a fictional New England town with a university that plays a role in several Lovecraft stories), a meteor has fallen in a field. Geology professors and other experts are unable to determine the mineral composition of the meteor rock. But it melts. Several months later crops and livestock have died, agricultural experts think that it could be the water table, but it tests okay. Then people begin to die, but only on the farm. People who came to help the family become engaged in a battle with strange creatures, when they withdraw, no one reports this to authorities, knowing that no one will believe them, but local people will avoid the farm property which is gray and unfertile forever.

 In the Mountains of Madness (1931)

This is the first story I read and blogged about, five years ago. It is an absolute horror story detailing an expedition to an unexplored region of Antarctica. A group of explorers set out from the ship to investigate a mountain range – they do not return. A search party is sent out uncovering the first group who had been hideously murdered and discovering an ancient non-Earth civilization living under the mountains. One member of the search party connects this reality to a story he once heard about (see The Call of the Cthulhu above). In his formal report on the expedition, he will not mention this but discourages further explorers from going there.

Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936)

Innsmouth is a fishing and long-ago shipping town abandoned by tourists and industry alike. It is isolated from other nearby towns by marshes. A young man doing a tour of antiquarian towns in New England unknowingly plans a day trip to Innsmouth. Locals at Newburyport where he is waiting for the bus the next morning, have nothing nice to say about Innsmouth or the peculiar people who still live there. Years ago, a religious cult had arrived from Polynesia, they intermarried with the townspeople and had converted the entire town. The children of these marriages are rumored to be amphibians. People then began to disappear after attending mysterious meetings on a reef off the coast. Authorities will try to quell the rumors declaring it to be a bootleg operation and bomb the reef. The student will end up spending the night stuck in Innsmouth where he is targeted for death because he has learned too much trying to solve the mystery. I left a lot out of this brief recap; it is a masterpiece of horror, and of Cthulhu mythology.

Reanimator (1922)

The Reanimator is the source story of a horror movie I saw recently during a local theater’s scary Halloween month series. It is not part of the Cthulhu series. It is about a medical student who has created a serum that will bring people back to life if you can get to them soon enough after death. The movie is true to the plot, but definitely a B-movie, lots of gore, lots of unwarranted nudity. Did I mention lots of gore!

Other

There are twenty-two other short stories in the Library of America’s Tales, the collection of Lovecraft’s work, all in the horror and/or science fiction genre. I've not read them all yet, but I will.

Recommendation: Yes. These short stories make perfect bedtime reads.

By the Sea (2001) By Abdulrazak Gurnah

 

An activist friend of mine recently posted on the book By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah who won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gurnah, a native of Zanzibar, is a retired Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. I’ve just finished reading it.

Like most Americans, I suspect, all I knew about Zanzibar is that it is mentioned in the opening theme song of the Patty Duke Show. This lack of information about both the country as well as most African geography, complicated my read. So, like the main character, I accessed maps frequently, and then Wikipedia for historical summary.

By the Sea, fiction, is set in Zanzibar, Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika, a German colony, then a British protectorate), Kenya, East Germany (pre-unification), and the United Kingdom.

The story begins when a 65-year-old man born in Zanzibar arrives from Tanzania seeking refuge status in the UK.  He pretends to not know English and ends up at a refugee center where they will try to determine the legitimacy of his asylum request. His passport indicates his name is Rajab Shaaban Mahmud. He is assigned to a case worker named Rachel, the first friendly, non-bureaucratic person he has come across. Still, he won’t acknowledge that he knows how to speak English. Frustrated, Rachel contacts a professor in London who was an immigrant from Zanzibar years ago named Latif Mahmud, asking his assistance as a translator. After Shaaban hears the name of the translator, he confesses that he does know how to speak English. He tells her he knows the man’s name but seems hesitant to talk with him, quoting from Herman Melville’s short story Bartleby The Scrivener, “I would prefer not to.”

Rachel will persist, and once Latif has heard the refugee’s name he becomes interested in meeting him because Rajab Shaaban Mahmud is the name of his deceased father. Their eventual meeting confirms that the name on the passport Shaaban uses is stolen, his real name is Saleh Omar. They are in fact known to each other, with ugly family histories to rehash. These family dynamics are the heart and plot of the book.

There are multiple other aspects of this book that are interesting: one story is how the asylum system (UK not US) works; another is British colonial rule in East Africa and how its education worked to indoctrinate Africans; and an extensive overview of how independence when it came brought with it violence and corruption as warring factions fought each other for control; as well a first hand account of being an immigrant.

Recommendation: Yes

Ethan Frome (1911) By Edith Wharton

 

When Ethan Frome was published reviewers described it as an unfortunate love story that was not to be. Well, maybe, I guess, for hopeless romantics looking for subplot. Heaven-forbid people read the book for what it actually is, a manifesto on the impact of generational poverty. Or am I being too cynical?

The novella was written by Edith Wharton, an acclaimed author who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921 for The Age of Innocence. She is widely recognized as a chronicler of the “gilded age.” One could say Ethan Frome, published in 1911 chronicles the other 98%,

Yes there is a missed love story in the book, but it stands as Exhibit A on what poverty and lack of healthcare does to limit one’s personal options.

Ethan is the son of a dirt-poor farmer/timberman. When his father dies, he forfeits all hopes for an education because he must take care of the farm, the mill, and his mother. When she becomes ill, he must add her care to his daily task list. His outside social contacts in the rural area where he lives disappear due to a total lack of time. Distant relatives “help out” by sending him a woman named Zeena who has become a financial burden for them, to aid in taking care of the mother. He marries her because they need each other, not for love. After the death of his mother, Zeena too becomes ill, and spiteful. Ethan becomes ever deeper in financial ruin. Her family sends a cousin to “help out.” She is a young woman named Mattie that had also become another financial burden, first to them, now to him.

Zeena hates her, sensing competition. Ethan does eventually fall in love with Mattie, unconsumated, but they can’t run away together for lack of money and for his felt moral obligations. Zeena insists Mattie has to be replaced as incompetent. The doctor decides Zeena must have more professional help, another financial burden he can’t afford: the farm, the mill, the his wife, cousin, and now a paid outsider.

Not an uplifting subplot to be found. And it gets worse.

Recommendation: No, professionally written, but deeply depressing.

The Wapshot Scandal (1964) By John Cheever

 

I just finished reading The Wapshot Scandal by John Cheever. It is a sequel to his 1957 book The Wapshot Chronicle, a book I liked a lot. Because of that I’ve been eager to read the sequel, confident it would be more of the same, which would have been enough for me. It was that, and then some, hardly your standard sequel.

The first book was set in the fictional town of St Botolphs, MA and tells of the Wapshot family, prominent in the town for generations. It ends at the funeral of Leander Wapshot, for which both of his two sons have returned.

The Wapshot Chronicle

The Scandal picks up several years later, providing a brief review of the boys’ respective stories. Coverly is living on a military base with his wife Betsy and a son. Moses is living the life of a successful businessman, with his wife Melissa in an upscale suburb. Then, some interesting things happen.

Coverly gets a letter from his Aunt Honora, the family's matriarch asking him to visit her. He does, arriving alone by train. When checking in with Aunt Honora she tells him they can’t successfully sell or rent the house he and Moses inherited equally from their parents. The prospective buyers/renters claim the house is haunted.

Coverly goes to the house he grew up in to spend the night. In the middle of the night, he is awakened by the ghost of his deceased father. Coverly flees the house, and town, without even confirming to Aunt Honora that it is in fact haunted.

Long stories short: Coverly’s wife Betsy has mental health issues, is prone to fantasy, and holds him responsible for their low standard of living on a military base. Moses’ wife Melissa is a bored suburban housewife who ends up having an affair with a teenage boy named Emile who delivers their groceries. IRS visits Honora because she has failed to pay any taxes for years and they are about to confiscate everything from her.

Next up: Honora (on the friendly advice of a local Judge) withdraws all her cash funds and flees to Europe on an ocean-liner ahead of her arrest, and has an onboard “friendship” with a gigolo stowaway. She will settle in Rome. Melissa, confronted by her husband, will also head for Europe ending up in suburban Rome. And unbeknownst to Melissa, Emile, stressed by it all, will join the merchant marines heading to Europe. Emile ends up in a “meat market” where he is purchased, splitting the funds with the market owner – and of course, his purchaser at the meat market auction is none other than Melissa.

There are multiple “other” escapades in this book, some of which are hysterically funny (Honora’s audience with the Pope for instance). The Wapshot Scandal reads in places as off the wall as though it could have been written by Kurt Vonnegut.

Like I noted earlier, not your standard sequel, but a fun read.

Recommendation: yes. One could read this as a standalone novel, but my recommendation would be to read The Wapshot Chronicle first.