The H.P. Lovecraft Reading Club

[Gibby]

Well I was meant to be at yet another chaotic masquerade ball with all the other noble socialites this evening but my plans have been cancelled. So I shall read the story this very eve. ¬_¬

[Mantis]

I haven't read it yet as I've been away all weekend. Feel free to post your thoughts though, I'll read it tonight and share something tomorrow most likely.

[Stormbringer]

Have you read it yet, Gibby?

[Gibby]

I have indeed, but I may not manage to post my thoughts until tomorrow!

[Stormbringer]

Apologies; I did not have time to write up my thoughts today (or I should say I did not make time), but will do so at first opportunity tomorrow.

[Stormbringer]

Right!

So, The Outsider then...

Spoiler

As I said before, this was my first ever HPL story. It really captured my imagination like nothing ever had before and totally sucked me in. I became a Lovecraft fan from that day forth.

The Outsider is very obviously a Poe pastiche. It has been argued by some that this is Lovecraft's best tale, and I'm inclined to agree myself. It appeals to me on a very deep psychological level which I find hard to explain. I think, to an extent, I find I identity a lot with the feelings expressed by the narrator.

Here is how I interpret the narrative:

A lord of a noble family, probably from medieval England, has been buried in the family mausoleum. His memories of his former life have been buried with him and he cannot recall them. Desperate with an instinctive desire to taste life and light, he finds a way back to the surface of the churchyard he was buried in and strolls (and swims) through the countryside until he finds his former family estate, which has been modernised over time by the descendants of the family. The year could now easily be anywhere between 1700-1900. I am imagining it's Downton Abbey...



He sees the current members of the family having a party or a feast through the windows and, having nobody to teach him appropriate social skills, he climbs through the open window into the room to join in the fun. Sadly, this doesn't seem to go down too well and everyone runs away screaming and covering their eyes in horror.



Being totally naive, our narrator assumes they're running away from some other nearby dread, which he actually catches sight of in a doorway, and experiences the same feelings of horror, but unlike the other members of the family, he fails his Dexterity roll and stumbles into the thing, which turns out to be not a doorway, but a mirror. He was staring at himself the whole time. Dang. However, he doesn't shriek, because upon realisation of the truth, he suddenly regains his memories from life. This is the greatest horror. Why? Because his former life, before he was buried, was utterly miserable (for reasons unclear). Having been desperate to find life and light, on finding it he is now desperate to escape back to the darkness of the tomb, rushing back to the mausoleum whence he first emerged into the land of the living. Finding it sealed shut, he realises he actually hated being down there anyway, and embraces his new identity as a creature of the night. Somehow he finds himself adopted by a tribe of ghouls who, like The Hound, are able to "ride the night-wind" (astride a Bacchanale of bats from night-black ruins of buried temples of Belial, perhaps?)

He ends up in Egypt, where he hangs out with his adopted ghoul family "among the catacombs of Nephren-Ka (a fictional Pharaoh that HPL made up) in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile" and partakes in "unnamed feasts of Nitokris (a historical fictional Egyptian queen mentioned in classical sources) beneath the Great Pyramid". He drinks a lot of nepenthe (a fictional classical-era anti-depressant) to keep calm, knowing that even here, among his new ghoul friends, he knows he doesn't really belong in the world.


Time for some questions:

1. What do YOU think is going on here? Do you agree with my interpretation above, or do you see it differently?

2. What's up with that dark castle beneath the ground? Is it a real place? Is it an alternate reality, like the Dreamlands? Is it all in his head?

3. What exactly is the narrator? Is he a reanimated corpse? A vampire? A ghoul? He's pretty athletic; he runs swiftly, swims (across rivers) and climbs (up stone walls and through windows). He wrenches open ancient stone doors and lifts marble trapdoors with his head. Not your typical staggering animated corpse, is he?

4. Were you surprised by the ending -- the revelation that it was his own reflection he saw -- or did you see this coming from way off?

5. What psychological effect did reading this tale have on you, if any?

[Sly Boots]

Spoiler

I have to be a little honest and say this was probably my least favourite of the stories so far, but that's largely because I guessed the twist that he was a creature of the night (of some description) quite early on, from the time he emerged in the graveyard really. From then on I felt myself urging the narrative to get to the point a bit quicker, particularly in the drawn-out description of his reflection.

I largely agree with the above, although I must admit that in my reading I didn't pick up on any suggestions he was related to the family he bursts in on later, although I guess that is possible.I felt like he wandered quite a long way after leaving the graveyard.

I also found the opening confusing, more so when I went back to re-read it knowing the denouement. I was left a bit baffled by the description of the trees and towers when he is clearly underground, and of the ghoulish servant he was raised by... it adds atmosphere early on, but by the time you learn he's crawled up from the crypt for me at least it didn't really hold up and I found it quite hard to visualise that underground place.

I don't think it had any psychological effect on me to speak of.

[Stormbringer]

Spoiler

I must admit that in my reading I didn't pick up on any suggestions he was related to the family he bursts in on later

When he approaches the estate he claims the building is "maddeningly familiar" and yet strange because old parts have been demolished and new wings have been added.

He also says that some of the faces of the family within bring back "incredibly remote recollections" (family resemblances to people he knew in "life").

He also says: "I knew in that second all that had been; I remembered beyond the frightful castle and the trees, and recognised the altered edifice in which I now stood."

He remembers his old home.

I also found the opening confusing, more so when I went back to re-read it knowing the denouement. I was left a bit baffled by the description of the trees and towers when he is clearly underground, and of the ghoulish servant he was raised by... it adds atmosphere early on, but by the time you learn he's crawled up from the crypt for me at least it didn't really hold up and I found it quite hard to visualise that underground place.

I find it confusing too. I find it confusing how he talks about his memories of childhood, the fear and sadness of it, yet has no memory of who he is or who raised him. I suspect he is equally confused to exist and yet not know how he came to exist, or have any frame of reference as to who he is or what life should be like, except pictures in old books of a happy sunlit world.

[Mantis]

Spoiler

I largely agree with the synopsis above, though from previous stories I'd also consider the possibility that he was taken as a child to this underground castle and was raised by beings who, themselves, were on the path to becoming full 'Hound'-like creatures; since his only recollection of people caring for him during his time down there are those who were 'mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shrivelled, and decaying'.

I have to say that I didn't particularly enjoy this one as much as the others. I'm fairly certain that I haven't read it before and yet the twist became apparent to me pretty quickly; and, like Sly, by that point I was sort of just waiting for it to end whilst the narrator went through the motions.

[Stormbringer]

Spoiler

Good point, Mantis.

I did consider that the underground castle might be a real, physical place and that the narrator was cradle-snatched by ghouls as a baby, Pickman-style, and raised in the darkness to be one of them. Perhaps over time he has become one (however that works).

I also like the idea that he is a Hound-like creature -- perhaps a reanimated corpse who has been magically imbued with the soul of a ghoul. It would actually be very amusing to imagine The Hound being written from The Hound's point of view. The Hound was misunderstood the whole time!

Sorry to hear that neither of you liked this all that much. Let's see what Gibby and Snowy think.

[Sly Boots]

Spoiler

Good point, Mantis.

I did consider that the underground castle might be a real, physical place and that the narrator was cradle-snatched by ghouls as a baby, Pickman-style, and raised in the darkness to be one of them. Perhaps over time he has become one (however that works).

I also like the idea that he is a Hound-like creature -- perhaps a reanimated corpse who has been magically imbued with the soul of a ghoul. It would actually be very amusing to imagine The Hound being written from The Hound's point of view. The Hound was misunderstood the whole time!

Sorry to hear that neither of you liked this all that much. Let's see what Gibby and Snowy think.

It's not that I didn't like it, just that I liked the other two more!

I'm still glad I read it. It's probably different for us now coming to Lovecraft's work knowing what he's all about, than it was for people at the time it was written, particularly given that it was his first (I think you said) story, and for them the twist may well have been a surprising one.

[Stormbringer]

It wasn't his first, but it is one of his earlier ones. It was the first one I read, though.

The first time I read it, I actually was surprised by the ending! I am a bit slow though.

[Gibby]

Sorry for the delay:

Spoiler

I always thought the narrator was some kind of Nosferatu type creature but he was quite unaware that he was anything abnormal, having only ever lived in that bizarre (and confusing) underground crypt/castle. It was lost on me that he mentioned a maddening familiarity with the estate he encounters upon his escape to the surface. I've never been a particularly huge fan of this story; I pretty much echo the sentiments of the others - the narrative is slightly confusing overall. The start of it more or less gives away that this is not a normal person telling the story, and the surroundings are weird (underground forests, etc). It's never really had any kind of psychological effect on me and despite my love of miserable weather and staying indoors in misty forest castles, I've never felt any kind of kindred-spirit effect from the narrator like I know Doug has.

I actually find the party-crashing scene quite amusing. The image of him stumbling around like an idiot due to the chaos and panic, eventually into a mirror is, for me, a bit of a laugh. ¬_¬

I'm having trouble articulating my thoughts about this one, to be honest. So far, it is my least favourite of what we've read, but that doesn't make it a bad one.

Doug, I want you to answer your questions! ¬_¬

[Snowy]

Back, and will read in due course. However, if memory serves this is most appropriate

[Stormbringer]

Ha! I was actually listening to that yesterday as I wrote up my post. ¬_¬

I really like the tracks: "Ramses Bringer of War" and "Das rache krieg lied der Assyriche".

Was also reading about Ramses at the Battle of Kadesh to my children this morning, and about the Assyrians the previous day (as part of home-schooling), so even more appropriate.

Since you're here, have you got any thoughts on Pickman's Model, Snowy?

+++

Following on from Gibby's post...

Spoiler

I have to admit, I also struggled to articulate my thoughts about this one too. It is a confusing story and has a kind of blurry, lucid-dream-like quality to it, which makes it hard to explain or talk about in rational or logical terms.

Speaking of dreams, this is not the only HPL story involving a castle with a tower that leads up to a trapdoor into another world. In The Dreamlands this motif is repeated; the protagonist of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath climbs the tallest tower of a gloomy castle in the Dreamlands Underworld, opens a trapdoor in the roof, crawls through and finds himself in a forest that he had previously been through earlier in the story. Perhaps Lovecraft actually had this dream and thought it was such a great idea he wrote it down. I have to say, as a motif or concept I quite like it!

So, to answer my own questions:

1. WTF is going on? 2. What's up with the underground castle? 3. What IS the narrator? 4. Was I surprised by the ending? 5. What effect did it have on me?

I will answer these out of order.

Firstly: what is the narrator?

It's tempting to think, based on certain descriptions, that this guy is a reanimated corpse, though his ability to think, reason and move about with a physical vigour that is stronger than many living humans makes me feel that he's not your typical rotting zombie, but rather a ghoul or, as Gibby suggests, a Nosferatu-like creature, or as Mantis suggests, the same type of creature as The Hound, though lacking the power or knowledge of travel-by-bats.

There have been several illustrations of this tale, most of which show the encounter at the mirror, but my favourite one (and how I imagine the narrator) is this:



MAGNIFICENT! Drawn by the great fantasy illustrator LES EDWARDS! And it features GRAND PROMINENCE in this particular book, and well it should, for it is without doubt the best piece of art he ever produced!

See what I did there? ¬_¬


What is the underground castle?

I am inclined to think it's a physical underground castle in a cavern, and what he thinks are trees of a forest are actually just the rock walls of a cave reaching up to the top. He doesn't have anyone around to correct him, so he goes on believing they are trees. It's not the only HPL story to feature an underground city, so this is plausible. Alternatively, the dark castle in the dark forest is actually located in the Dreamlands Underworld, where many ghouls live, and the ruined tower is a gateway that leads to the waking world. There are many such doorways in the Dreamlands and this is quite possible. Perhaps another tower from another Dreamlands castle leads into the basement of Richard Pickman's basement art studio?

What is going on?

Thinking about it, I am starting to believe that this man was cradle-snatched from the family estate as a small child, and raised by ghouls who then for some reason abandoned the underground castle and left him behind. He is a living human who has transformed over time into a ghoul. He has some very hazy memories of the estate from his childhood days, which is why he remembers it ever-so-vaguely when he returns, though not as it is now (as it's been extended and modified over the centuries).

I've already explained that the first time I read this I did not see the mirror coming so I was genuinely surprised to find that HE was the monster the whole time. So that just leaves...

What psychological effect did this have on me?

Well, at the time I read it I was probably at one of the lowest points of my life. I had been rejected, shunned and misunderstood by virtually everyone around me for my entire life -- at primary school, at high school, at college, at church, at work, at home, and had absolutely no friends. I was universally rejected, like I didn't belong in the world. It was widely broadcasted at school that I was the ugliest, most misfit person anyone had ever seen. This only got worse as the years went by and all the other kids grew up and become socially well adjusted, but I was left behind. I also had a peculiarly dark sense of humour that nobody understood, as well as a slightly unhinged, "psychopathic" edge, and slowly I descended into more and more isolation and resulting madness. At the time I read it, this tale perfectly captured my feelings and mood and I felt understood for the first time in my existence. For me, reading The Outsider was like the narrator's experience when he touches the mirror and realises the truth about himself. I finally found a perfect expression of my feelings. I was The Outsider.

I knew in that second all that had been; I remembered beyond the frightful castle and the trees, and recognised the altered edifice in which I now stood; I recognised, most terrible of all, the unholy abomination that stood leering before me as I withdrew my sullied fingers from its own.

That's why this had such an impact on me and why I became a fan of HPL. A little too much of a fan, it must be said, but that's another story.

So, as the week moves toward a close, I will start suggesting our next port of call.

Once again this tale offers us several directions we could travel...

1. Mucking about in graveyards
2. Mucking about in hidden Egyptian catacombs
3. Dwelling alone in ancient castles
4. Feeling isolated from humanity and being angsty about it
5. Returning to the family estate and finding it's not quite what you expected
6. Creepy abhumans living underground