In honor of New Horizons' passage near Pluto/Yuggoth...
This may be a flawed story, in some ways, but it’s still one
of my favorites. It has such a wild
start. I love the image of a twitchy
Lovecraftian protagonist who has raced away in a “commandeered motor.” And then we’re immediately introduced to a
bizarre, seemingly irrational fear of “crowded green hills” and the “endless
trickle of brooks.” For anyone else, this
would be a tourist's paradise – but not for Lovecraft, or his literary
creations. The theme of a menacing geography
is pretty strong, and continues in a quirky mode of expression, as with the
reference to “certain caves of problematic depth.”
Lovecraft is a master of the momentary, fleeting spectacle –
the horrific revelation that is also (almost) beautiful – or at least in some
way awe inspiring. “Once a specimen was
seen flying – launching itself from the top of a bald, lonely hill at night and
vanishing in the sky after its great flapping wings had been silhouetted an
instant against the full moon.”
Almost in opposition to images of such sudden clarity,
Lovecraft also immerses us in a slow tide of convoluted language. We find hidden threats and ominous similes
amidst evasive, witch-like sentences. “It
was not good, either, to listen to what they whispered at night in the forest
with voices like a bee’s that tried to be like the voices of men.” The slight awkwardness of such a sentence is,
I think, a subtle element of its horror – and as we stumble through Lovecraft’s
curious sentences and eldritch vocabulary, we are drawn into his world of
shimmering nightmares.
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