Lovecraft is known (and infamous) for his tales, which are often linguistically dense. Lovecraft's tale, The Outsider, is among his best, as is The Call of Cthulhu, and Pickman's Model. What is striking about these three pieces in their connecting elements. The element that connects these three pieces is that one doesn't actually see the monster through the narrative. Granted the reader does not see the monsters, they do get a glimpse at the end.
The Outsider is one of those mind-bending pieces that one has to work on. Lovecraft does very well with his creepy settings (See Dagon, At the Mountains of Madness). This is perhaps one of Lovecraft's most technical stories, not just with language, but what does does with both. It reads a bit like poetry, and it may have worked in poetic verse. What makes this work tick, what gives it that impact is the one-two punch of the ending.
The Call of Cthulhu is one of those pieces that feels like it goes on longer than it really is. Perhaps that's its creepy-factor, but one of the aspects of the piece is that fact it unravels as it goes on, and given the world-wide scale, it could have been ten times the length. What makes Cthulhu such an effective monster is that, we only understand so little about it, but we understand the scope of its abilities: to influence the minds of humanity. Cthulhu is one of those monsters that puts the others to shame.
Pickman's Model is more tame than the other two pieces by Lovecraft. The creepiness is there and the ending is what Lovecraft's tales are known for. What makes this such an effective piece, like The Outsider, Lovecraft makes great use of the environment and time settings and adds in the unknown, which isn't supernatural, or not on the surface. Lovecraft leaves out more than enough to keep a reader on edge and it's not because of his maddening use of language.
Rating: The Outsider-4/5; The Call of Cthulhu-4.5/5, Pickman's Model-4/5
Lovecraft has always had the best endings. Even when you catch on and realize what is about to happen, the way he words them is perfect and leaves that after-feeling of creepiness.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, while I love the other two stories, Call of Cthulhu has always been a little overrated to me. I think that the story should have been longer, because everything seems to get jumbled around to me and by the middle of the story, I found it a little hard to read. It was like three stories in one clump.