The Dunwich Horror

This particular Lovecraft story had a weaker effect on me this time. Although some of the prose is superb, and the horror is in some ways described more effectively than in the earlier two “great tales” (“The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Colour Out of Space”), the hero Armitage has certain comic book aspects that are hard to take seriously.

I’m less bothered than Joshi by the apparent relapse from the amoral cosmos of the earlier stories to the strain of Christian moralism in Dunwich (though the calling out of “Father!” on the top of the hill is a bit much). Even though this is one of the rare stories with an omniscient 3rd person narrator, the narrator feels like a real human who is reporting events from the standpoint of human benefit/harm.

But one of the most brilliant aspects of this story is the way that the monstrous Wilbur Whateley, nearly 8 feet tall, first visits the fictional Miskatonic University Library and then Harvard. Lovecraft does this effectively with authors as well, regularly listing the Necronomicon and other non-existent books alongside genuine authors such as Pico della Mirandola.

The structure of my book, however, will not be a story-by-story survey. Instead, it will be an investigation of Lovecraft’s philosophical/rhetorical toolbox. There are certain brilliant tricks he uses repeatedly. Many are adopted from Poe, though Poe deserves a book of his own and I won’t enter that topic much in the present book.