Monsters with tentacles, I thought. This is supposed to be interesting? Button-mashing posing as “ancient language”? Meh. I’d never read Lovecraft, even though it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d be interested in, because I’d seen the pop-culture version of the mythos, and it was ridiculous. “Fthagn”? Seriously? Then I somewhat randomly landed at the The H. P. Lovecraft Archive, which, I think, has almost all of the stories Lovecraft ever published. After reading one of the shorter texts, I jumped into At the Mountains of Madness. That was pretty much my evening. Finished reading it around 1 am. Wow. This stuff is really a lot creepier, subtler and more atmospheric than I ever imagined. I wonder if all the people who are perpetuating this silly tentacle-monster-pulp image of Lovecraft realize that their appreciation of his universe actively discourages others from delving into it, because they make it seem so inconsequential and stupid?
Oct 18, 2010