H. P. Lovecraft “Tales”

Yesterday I bought The Library of America copy of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Tales, a collection of 22 of Mr. Lovecraft’s most famous stories.  The whole collection was selected by Peter Straub, an appropriate individual for the job, if I may say so myself (Mr. Straub also wrote the notes for the collection).  It was this collection, several years back now (when I was in college) that first introduced me to H. P. Lovecraft.  Much like Everything is Illuminated I found Tales while I was shelving some books, and thought “why not?”  A good choice all around.

I have long been a fan of what is considered horror or dark fiction.  As a child (I’m sure of mentioned this before) I was particularly fond of John Bellairs who wrote startlingly creepy books for children and young adults.  As I got older I moved on to Stephen King (who I know I have mentioned as probably my favorite living writer).  I have also long been a fan of Edgar Allen Poe, whom the inside cover of Tales‘ notes as having been a direct predecessor to H. P. Lovecraft’s dark works.

There is much in Lovecraft’s works to admire.  He had an uncanny knack at creating a sense of uncertainty.  Most of his stories rely on at best a questionable narrator, if not one who is outright unreliable due to the possibility of insanity or some other degree of derangement.  While I read some of the stories last night I thought of this fact.  As the reader, the audience of the story, it is hard to determine the truth in what the narrators give.  You want to believe it because it is what you are provided in the story, and yet these narrators often admit to having slipped into madness and insanity due to the horrors they encountered and often what they describe is too strikingly absurd to truly believe.  It is a wonderful conflict which Mr. Lovecraft created.

Then again there is his mythos, the vast dark stories of beings of immense power, which have influenced a great number of other writers since.  The Lovecraft Mythos creates a world in which we are all unfortunate victims to the whims of beings so vastly more powerful than ourselves and beyond anything we possess the capacity to understand.  These are ancient creatures that lack any regard to the suffering or needs of humanity, they exist for their own timeless purposes and we just happen to occasionally get in their way.  They are incomprehensible monsters and yet they have the amazing ability to fascinate us, to make us want to understand even a mote point about them.

The sad thing about H. P. Lovecraft is that he died at a rather young age (he was only 46 years old).  One can only imagine that if he had lived longer he might have had the chance to created even more strange dark tales, as well as expand further upon his mythos.  Alas it is not so, and we must make do with those works that he created.  If you are looking for eerie, dark tales, of the things that go bump in the night, then Lovecraft is an essential read.

“Dune” Everybody should Read It!

I would like to extend praise to Douglas Cohen in his efforts to sell Frank Herbert’s Dune to more traditional fans of the fantasy genre (as opposed to the science fiction, where Dune is generally placed).  That being said though, I wish he had pushed further, and not just outreached to fans of the fantasy genre but to readers of all sorts.  While I admit to the personal nature of my opinion, because of my love of the book, I feel that Dune is one of those great novels that should be picked up by everybody.

The thing is that even though Dune is definitely science fiction in its basic structure, I think the story does a lot to transcend the genre.  It is a work, somewhat like Tolkien’s The Hobbit that offers so much more than a simple genre labeling would provide.  I remember when I first read Dune, back when I was a sophomore in high school, being absolutely fascinated by the apparent parallels to the trade guilds during the Enlightenment.  Dune has so much more to do with political systems and power struggles than it really does with spaceships and different planets (sure the spaceships and planets are present, but they are really just vehicles used to convey the complex ideas within the story).  Essentially Dune has always struck me as a wonderfully developed contemplation on the interplay of politics, economics, and religion and how pulling a string in one area inevitably causes effects in the others.

What is more is that Mr. Herbert created some of the most memorable characters you could ever encounter.  Paul Atreides is ten times the hero that Luke Skywalker could ever aspire to be.  He demonstrates outstanding qualities of bravery, level headedness, and all around wisdom in the face of great adversity and ultimately finds transcendence in the tough lot that life has given him.  And the villains like Baron Harkonnen truly strike an emotional chord of the possibilities of the corrupting influence of power and greed. 

Really it is a magnificent book, that I strongly suggest to everyone who claims to like a good read.  It has all the elements that make it an appealing sci-fi or fantasy novel and yet it does so much more than that in the end so that it doesn’t really matter much what genre it is lumped in.

Interestingly, while I was cleaning my room this weekend, which led to my finding and beginning to re-read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (which I wrote about in my previous post) I also discovered my copy of Dune and strongly considered giving it another read for old times sakes.  I have it on my desk at home and think that it might be what I move on to once I finish Everything is Illuminated.

On the Re-Read . . . Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything is Illuminated”

While I was cleaning my room this past weekend I came upon my paperback copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated and decided, because I did not currently have any demanding books on my read list, that I’d reread it.  Everything is Illuminated is probably one of my favorite books published in the past decade, and this will be my third reading of it since I first picked it up in early 2006.

The way in which I came upon Everything is Illuminated strikes me as rather interesting.  Truth is I had never heard of the author or the book, and probably never would have if it weren’t for my parents plugging the movie version of the story.  While I was in college my parents loved to suggest tons of movies to me (actually they still do this, but now that I have Netflix I actually get around to watching most of them).  So they kept mentioning this film Everything is Illuminated starring Elijah Wood and how great it was, and my response was something along the lines of “yeah, yeah, awesome, I’ll keep my eyes out for it,” knowing full well that I probably wouldn’t bother looking for it at all.  Apparently the fates that be had a better idea in store.

I was working at the library at school (where I worked for all four years in which I was in college) and was shelving books in the main browsing section (just a collection of popular titles, not necessarily new or anything, just books that had good reviews and seemed popular) when I came upon a copy of Everything is Illuminated.  I recognized the title almost immediately as “that movie I hear about every time I talk to my parents.”  Because I wasn’t reading anything at the time I thought, “hell, why not give this a try, in the very least it might get my parents to leave me alone about the movie for a bit.”  So I picked it up and began reading.  Needless to say, due to my openning of this post, I was captivated.

I will say that Everything is Illuminated might not be for everybody.  The story style can be kind of confusing seeing as it jumps around some between narrators and time period (personally I got used to it pretty fast), it is also kind of a bizarre story to begin with; lots of strange characters, use of strange language, and an overall different driving plot.  But I think once a person gets over the initial difficulties that the story presents they find themselves reading a truly magnificent and moving novel.

I’m trying to avoid spoiling the book too much here.  Basically I think Everything is Illuminated is all about the development of a narrative.  In some ways it presents purposely unreliable accounts of similar events to reiterate the fact that a narrative is reliable only in the perspective of a given party at a given time.  The concept of history playing a direct role on present events is also a very strong theme throughout the book (something which it shares with Foer’s second novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close).  All and all, the relationships that develop throughout the novel between characters, past and present, creates a marvelous interplay of emotion and narrative, culminating in a mixture of tragedy and transcendence.  The book really does have some of the saddest moments I’ve read in any books in recent years, enough to pretty much cause a few tears.  But there is also a really good feeling about it, even in the moments that lack true resolution, because it seems strikingly real.

For anybody who is interested in a slightly different novel structure, a story about family and history, as well as a book about travel and exploration, I would greatly suggest looking into Everything is Illuminated (you also may enjoy Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which is a great novel in its own rights).  I will also give big credit to the film version of Everything is Illuminated which, while it changes some aspects, is a remarkably well made and enjoyable movie that remains relatively true to the book.

‘Waiting for Godot’ Returns to Broadway

I was pretty excited to read that Waiting for Godot will be back in production on Broadway starring some pretty big names in the acting world (Nathan Lane and John Goodman).  I rather enjoy the audio slide show narrated by the director Anthony Page, especially considering the Mr. Page had an opportunity to work with Samuel Beckett himself.  Now I feel like I have to get to NYC to see a performance of the play, especially considering that part of what I am writing about Waiting for Godot deals with the audeince aspect of the play.  Good stuff.  A fun little find this Friday morning.