I imagine there comes a moment in everyone\u2019s life when they think to themselves, \u201cI need to read the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft.\u201d For me, that moment came last April and after a surprisingly difficult time I managed to track down the three volumes of his collected stories, At the Mountains of Madness, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales<\/i> and the volume I saved for the end of summer, the one I am reading now, The Dunwich Horror and Others<\/i>. What has reading some 1400 pages of H.P. Lovecraft taught me? For one thing, Rhode Island has profoundly ante-diluvian cultural influences. For another, Americans from quite different educational, social and economic backgrounds are remarkably adept at transliterating non-human languages, particularly ones in which \u201cPh\u2019nglui mgw\u2019nafh Cthulhu R\u2019lyeh wgah\u2019nagl fhtagn\u201d is a popular proverb. And, finally, for an extremely rare and dangerous book, the \u201cmad Arab Abdul Alhazred\u2019s\u201d dread Necronomicon ex mortis<\/i> is exceptionally common throughout New England in the original Arabic, as well as in Latin and English translations, not only in a variety of university and public libraries, but also in numerous run down shacks just outside of town, preferably inhabited by Puritans \u201cdivorced from the enlightenment of civilization\u2026who in their isolation, morbid self-repression, and struggle for life with relentless nature\u201d acquire \u201cdark furtive traits from the pre-historic depths of their cold Northern heritage.\u201d One of these traits, evidently, is a sort of happy-go-lucky cannibalism. I would say it has been a summer well spent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I imagine there comes a moment in everyone\u2019s life when they think to themselves, \u201cI need to read the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft.\u201d For me, that moment came last April and after a surprisingly difficult time I managed to track down the three volumes of his collected stories, At the Mountains of Madness, Dagon … <\/p>\n