The H.P. Lovecraft Reading Club

[Sly Boots]

*sees The Hound is not part of the Lovecraft compendium I bought yesterday*

You were ripped off, mate. Get a refund!

Just reading the titles though I think it's a decent 'greatest hits' as it were as even with my limited knowledge I recognise a bunch of them - Call of Cthulu, Dunwich Horror, Shadow Over Innsmouth etc - so I think it's probably a good purchase for the price nonetheless.

[Sly Boots]

And done.

[Sly Boots]

Obviously we'll cover it in greater depth at a later date, but having just finished I wanted to say that, on the back of what Doug and Mantis have said about his views, that I did chuckle a fair amount at the line:

"We only realised, with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the Dutch language."

I could just imagine racist old Howard sitting there with his pen, a cold sweat on his brow at the horrifying thought of that foreign jibber-jabber

[Gibby]

Also finished my re-read. Classic as ever!

[Sly Boots]

Also finished my re-read. Classic as ever!

Just Mantis to go (possibly?)?

[Stormbringer]

What about Alan?

I did chuckle a fair amount at the line:

"We only realised, with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the Dutch language."

I could just imagine racist old Howard sitting there with his pen, a cold sweat on his brow at the horrifying thought of that foreign jibber-jabber

That is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about earlier when I said I have found a happy medium now between defending and shunning HPL -- just seeing the funny side of his paranoid xenophobia. Lovecraft does actually return to his fear of the Dutch in at least one other story, which we will cover later.


However, I think the point of that line is to suggest the horror that someone or some thing has followed them back from Holland. ¬_¬

[Sly Boots]

However, I think the point of that line is to suggest the horror that someone or some thing has followed them back from Holland. ¬_¬

Oh, indeed. It was only the fact the last-but-two letter of the alphabet key on my netbook keyboard (which I'd been reading it on) stopped working a while back that prevented me from mentioning that in conte[blank]t it isn't out of place.


... although that said the cemetery didn't have to be in Holland... ¬_¬

[Stormbringer]

Well, I don't know if Alan is going to respond, so shall we just start talking about it? ¬_¬

Did Mantis finish it already?

For those of us who have read it, we can always put our thoughts in Spoiler tags for those who intended to join us but didn't quite make it in time.

Here are my thoughts and observations:

Spoiler

This is by far my favourite passage from the story, purely for the evocative Gothic imagery it conjures. It is almost like a painting in words:

I can recall the scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the livid sky; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a distant corner; the odours of mould, vegetation, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and worst of all, the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound which we could neither see nor definitely place.

It's repeated almost directly underneath, which really emphasises the morbid excitement the characters draw from the scene:

I remembered how we delved in this ghoul’s grave with our spades, and how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the grave, the pale watching moon, the horrible shadows, the grotesque trees, the titanic bats, the antique church, the dancing death-fires, the sickening odours, the gently moaning night-wind, and the strange, half-heard, directionless baying, of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure.

Then, finally, I love how when he returns to Holland the second time, alone, the scene is described again -- this time no longer as a thrill-seeker aesthete's Halloween fantasy, but as a scene of desperate, desolate wintry loneliness:

So at last I stood again in that unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows, and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the unfriendly sky, and the night-wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. The baying was very faint now, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which had been hovering curiously around it.

I'm assuming, from their lifestyle, that these two men are aristocrats with an insane amount of disposable income. Every time I read it I often wonder what technology they are using to create the "special effects" in their little dungeon:

It was a secret room, far, far underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the lines of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Through these pipes came at will the odours our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies, sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the kingly dead, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!—the frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the uncovered grave.

Weird green and orange light? Assuming this story is set in the 1920s, these men could probably afford electric lighting, and presumably they're using some kind of stained glass within the mouths of the daemon statues to change the colour of the light? I wonder what is powering the pneumatic pipes, though? Also, how do they get smells to blow through the pipes? I know all this would be easy to re-create with modern theater technology, but I have no idea what kind of things were technically possible back then.

Moving on, this part of the story is not further elaborated on, but is critically important for several reasons:

Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but we recognised it as the thing hinted of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the ghastly soul-symbol of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the dead.

This is the very first story in which Lovecraft mentions The Necronomicon -- the infamous fictional book which ties all the rest of his tales together into one cohesive "mythos" (later referred to as the Cthulhu Mythos). It's also significant because it ties The Hound -- a distinctly Gothic tale in the Poe tradition -- into the larger Cthulhu Mythos (which at the time The Hound was written, wasn't fully developed), thus gives the tale a distinctly Lovecraftian stamp that sets it apart from other Gothic tales. The above passage is also significant because we hear about the Arab author of the Necronomicon, Abdul Alhazred, though this is not the first time (and by no means the last) he is mentioned by Lovecraft. We'll talk more about him later. Other important features of the above passage are the mystical (and inaccessible) Plateau of Leng, which features several times in other Lovecraft tales as a mysterious otherworldly place where strange things dwell and stranger things take place. The "corpse-eating cult" and "canine face" of the carving are, arguably, shadows of Lovecraft's ghouls which feature in later works. Finally, the object itself which the grave-robbers steal is in its design and colour, possibly a precursor to a similar object which appears in a later, more famous tale, which we'll cover at another time.


Finally, I want to ask you a few questions:

1. How scary did you find the story?

2. What do you think The Hound actually is?

3. Why do you think the protagonist kills the vulture with his spade at the end? Is there some kind of significance of this, or is he just a psycho? ¬_¬

4. Slightly loaded question, but who do you think is the real monster in this story?

I would love to hear your own opinions.

[Gibby]

Spoiler

RE: Pneumatic Pipes. They had them in the early 20th Century. You know those things they'd send money/letters inside those those little capsules up. I imagine they have some compressor somewhere and at the bottom of the pipes some weird shit crammed in to scent the air. More later. ¬_¬

[Sly Boots]

Spoiler

Yes, I got very strong Poe vibes reading it, so it was interesting to do a little research afterwards and see that he lifted a few phrases directly from old Edgar (I assume intentionally), namely the knock at his chamber door, the red death and the oblong box. It all adds to a very gothic feel throughout.

I did enjoy it, the prose is quite purple and a little overwrought in places, but I feel this is very much in keeping with the style and period so it's fine. It has that central feature of a lot of that style of the indolent elite falling into dark pursuits through boredom as much as innate malevolence.

I did find myself wanting to know more about the background of these characters - how did they meet and how they realised they shared the same tendency towards the macabre, the details of their descent into assembling their museum of horrors. It's not a weakness that we don't have these as it's obviously intended to be a very short story, rather a strength that the little we're given manages to make us want to know much more.

1. How scary did you find the story?

I would say I found it interesting rather than scary, though obviously the notion of people from Holland was terrifying.

2. What do you think The Hound actually is?

I guess my take while reading was that it was a curse placed upon the amulet or a demonic force drawn to it due to its grisly history.

3. Why do you think the protagonist kills the vulture with his spade at the end? Is there some kind of significance of this, or is he just a psycho? ¬_¬

Honestly, the appearance of the vulture at all was odd... this was Holland, wasn't it? Is that a sign, seeing such an alien creature to that location, of his growing madness?

4. Slightly loaded question, but who do you think is the real monster in this story?

I mean, it has to be the protagonist/s, doesn't it?

[Mantis]

Spoiler

They're grave robbers who are obsessed with collecting macabre artifacts. Suffice to say they aren't exactly model human beings, you've got to imagine that they carried out a number of other reprehensible things to acquire the rest of their collection.

I don't think this particular story is scary, I think it's too hard to have any sympathy for the main character to actually have any feelings of fear on his behalf.

My theory regarding the amulet and The Hound is that the individual who possessed it in the grave was probably some sort of traveler or collector in a similar vein as the main character. Regardless, the amulet clearly comes from a foreign land, likely the mysterious Leng. The Hound itself is the beast as depicted on the front of the amulet, a winged sphinx-like canine. Perhaps it is only summoned when someone disturbs the amulet from its resting place, or perhaps it always haunts the land around where the amulet is kept and only makes appearances to maim people if they try and claim it for themselves.

[Stormbringer]

Thank you all for your thoughts so far. I'm hoping Snowy will also say something, and that Gibby will deliver "more later" as he promised...

Spoiler

I do actually find this story rather scary. It is one of a very small handful of HPL stories that really spook me, and to be honest it's all to do with the noises around their house after they return from Holland. I would be absolutely shitting myself if I lived in an isolated mansion on the moors and I heard my windows and locks being rattled at night, dark shapes appearing in front of the moon, giant bats whirling around, scratchings at my door, or knockings followed by shrill laughter. Bloody hell. That whole section gives me the creeps. No I don't sympathise with the protagonist, but I can imagine myself in that situation and it's very uncomfortable indeed!

I did come up with an elaborate theory earlier that the protagonist imagines everything after the Holland trip and he is the one who actually kills St. John (hacking him to pieces with his shovel), but the more I tried to explain it the more bizarre it got, so I dropped it. ¬_¬

[Sly Boots]

I don't think I scare particularly easily with books these days, although more so when I was a kid. I remember reading Stephen King's IT when I was about 11, getting to a particular passage (I don't remember which) and physically hurling the book into a corner of my room. Where it lay, undisturbed, for weeks, as I also gave it a wide berth when coming and going (cleverly I'd thrown it near to the door -_-) until I had the guts to pick it up again and continue.

Funnily enough, one of the scariest examples of the faux-gothic genre I've ever read is by Gerald Durrell of all people. I went through a phase when I was young of reading everything he wrote as he was my idol at the time (I did biology at A Level largely through some half-baked plan to follow in his footsteps). One of them is a collection of short-stories, mostly auto-biographical and involving incidents with his family (which are, incidentally, hilarious) called The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium.

But right at the end of the book is one very different. It has a very interesting framing device, that he goes and visits friends who collect oddities, who give him this manuscript to read that they came to in odd circumstances. What follows genuinely terrified me the first time I read it. I re-read it a few weeks ago and it is still highly creepy to this day.

It's called The Entrance. I highly recommend it if you can lay hands on it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/365 ... e-entrance

[Snowy]

My thoughts then:

Spoiler

In my view, the story is definitely evocative of Poe - some of the wording I think is deliberately similar.

I had not realised until reading Doug's comments that chronologically these were the first references to the Necronomicon, 'mad arab' Abdul Alhazred or the plateaus of Leng, all regular references in the Mythos.

I did also wonder at the means available to these two. Apart from the room of strange lights, smells, liquids etc:

Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, life-like bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist’s art, and with headstones snatched from the oldest churchyards of the world. Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the fresh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Statues and paintings there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St. John and myself. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnamable drawings which it was rumoured Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, and wood-wind, on which St. John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodaemoniacal ghastliness; whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity

So as well as the means to create the room itself, they also have some expertise in taxidermy. Additionally I had to wonder what the 'nauseous musical instruments' consisted of

It was this passage that got me the most though, the concept of a collection of "rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the fresh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children" is pretty chilling.

In response to the questions Doug poses:

1. How scary did you find the story?

It riffs on some of the elements I always found HPL to be a master of - sounds, occurrences, happening out of sight of the protagonist. One of first real scares was watching an old B&W film about a haunted house in which you never see anything. It is all noises, coupled with the gradual uncovering through exposition of the story of the house. You can be in no doubt that the place is haunted and does not want the people there (but will not let them leave) but you see nothing. That intangible sense of terror really gave me the creeps back when I watched the film, and is probably one of the reasons I love HPL's writing as he evokes that same sense.

2. What do you think The Hound actually is?

Not knowing the early chronology of this story in HPL's initial works, I thought that it was a nightgaunt for much of the book. I did ponder this, wondering if it might also be a Hound of Tindalos, but a little online digging (I can't find my old CoC player guide) shows this to be the creation of another Mythos writer who came after HPL, so that was out too.

Where I settled was on something along the lines of a Mythos ghoul which has somehow stumbled across the pendant, gaining some additional ability (in this case some affinity with the 'great bats' which carry it). If I recall, HPL ghouls were referenced as having canine heads, although HPLs own illustration from the story Pickford's Model doesn't show this



3. Why do you think the protagonist kills the vulture with his spade at the end? Is there some kind of significance of this, or is he just a psycho? ¬_¬

I had a couple of thoughts on this. The one that resonated the most with me was that the protagonist has been jolted out of the reverie that he and St John have been indulging in by realising how foul a level they have sunk to, and that they have created their own doom by descending to. The vulture, a carrion-eater, is symbolic of what they have become and the killing of it likewise symbolic of the desperate scramble back from the brink - albeit too late.

4. Slightly loaded question, but who do you think is the real monster in this story?

The obvious answer is the protagonists, but while they do engage in some abhorrent behaviour they don't actually cause anyone any harm in so doing. I am not sure whether this makes them monsters, or just extremely fucked up. The Hound is unquestionably a monster in the dictionary sense, but you are given no rationale behind why it does what it does. After all, it has lain quiescent for a long time, and only kills to get back the pendant that was taken from it. Whether the unfortunate thieves or the protagonists, you have to think that had they not each stolen in the first instance they would not have met with such a potent nemesis.

[Gibby]

Spoiler

Everyone has worded my thoughts already really well and I am struggling to articulate myself quite so splendidly. I saw the pair as being too far down the rabbit hole with their obsessions about anything macabre. I think that their seemingly unlimited amount of leisure time and money allowed them to indulge every last little bit of creepiness that the world has to offer. Or so they thought! I think Snowy makes an astoundingly brilliant point about the vulture. I think it also shows that, suddenly, the narrator wakes up to the reality of this indulgence, this fantasised version of exploring the macabre in the relative comfort and safety of their household and living standard. Suddenly, the terrible reality that can lie behind such explorations is laid bare to him as he realises his doom approaches - he cannot tidily pack away this adventure and experience into his vile collection. It's too late to undo what he's done, and too late to change from that which he has become.

I really like that the story explores going from being obsessed by the idea of something (reveling in the idea of seeing himself and St John digging away in that perfect Gothic-painting scenery in the graveyard shows perfectly the mindset) to encountering the terrible reality of a truly macabre/sinister/horrifying situation. I wonder if in his last moments he wished he'd just been into music or something!

There's also this passage I always really liked:

As we hastened from that abhorrent spot, the stolen amulet in St. John’s pocket, we thought we saw the bats descend in a body to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could not be sure. So, too, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound in the background. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and we could not be sure.

It's got a nice poetic rhythm to it.

To Doug's questions:

1. How scary did you find the story?

I find it more sinister than scary. As somebody who was, as a teenager, fairly obsessed with all things gothic, creepy and macabre (don't worry, I didn't plunder any crypts, or collect bits of people ¬___¬), I find the story to be quite compelling. Imagine an obsession that sees you fulfill every last whim about it - but you one day go too far and encounter something that suddenly strips you of your illusions and sense of distance/safety about any sort of harm befalling you. Combine that with having a lucid moment about what you'd become and, well, it would be a bleak death as hopeless as it is unavoidable.

2. What do you think The Hound actually is?

Quite simply, some kind of entity that is able to hunt down and horribly tear you apart. I wonder if it is a spectre that can only be seen/heard by those who are marked. I tended not to dwell too much on the nature of the Hound - I guess for me it was incidental; merely the agent of destruction that was overdue in visiting St John and the narrator. However, that the thing killed the thieves and their family simply for possessing the amulet at all says something of its nature and purpose. Perhaps a guardian of this particular grave, a bit like a vengeful version of a Church Grim from Folklore:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_grim


3. Why do you think the protagonist kills the vulture with his spade at the end? Is there some kind of significance of this, or is he just a psycho? ¬_¬

It's a part of the story I'm embarrassed to have just taken in my stride. I put it down to stress and frustration at the situation the narrator found himself in. Snowy nails it, I think.

4. Slightly loaded question, but who do you think is the real monster in this story?

The Dutch.