The H.P. Lovecraft Reading Club

[Sly Boots]

Wife went to bed early and I just fancied reading something a bit spooky before I went up

[Stormbringer]

Finished Red Hook this morning. Have you finished it yet, Snowy?

[Snowy]

About half way - sorry will pick my pace up!

[Stormbringer]

By the way, today marks a whole year since we started this reading club, the day after H.P. Lovecraft's 129th birthday. ¬_¬

[Sly Boots]

Kinda cool

[Stormbringer]

It would be cooler if we hadn't lost Gibby and Mantis. ¬_¬

[Sly Boots]

Yeah, haven't seen Gibby around for quite some time

[Stormbringer]

The Snowster's taking his time... ¬_¬

[Snowy]

Reading it now!

[Snowy]

Finished!

It took a few sessions too. It is possibly the most overtly racist of HPL's stories, and once I started I realised that I had done so a couple of time before and been put off by how blatant it was. Actually, I didn't think too much of the story either, it seemed more an incoherent ramble about the evils of New York for the most part and less a structured story. From a mythos perspective it was also a bit weird, seeming to involve creatures of more pedestrian folklore as well as Lilith, who investigation reveals as a character in the Talmud.

Yes, all in all I didn't enjoy it. It made me feel uncomfortable.

[Stormbringer]

I am surprised by your reaction!

How about you, Sly, what do you think of this one?

[Sly Boots]

I had to go back and skim it a bit as it had been a while since I read it

I think, on the whole, for a few reasons, I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous one.

Firstly, the racist undertones became racist overtones in this one, and like Snowy you find yourself squirming a bit now reading it. After reading I also did my usual Wikiing of the story for some background, and found mention that Lovecraft would be reduced to literal apoplexy when walking that area of NY and seeing people of other races walking about. You can feel his disgust coming through in this one, and I can't even say it aged badly, I feel like this one aged the instant it was written.

Also, like some of his other pieces, I feel the prose was just a bit too purple a bit too long in this one - I feel he's at his best, for me anyway, when the action is moving along apace rather than spending paragraphs staring into the abyssal void.

Related to the above, and the final reason I didn't like it as much, towards the end I just lost the gist of what was happening. It's the ritual, really. I was following it up to a point but then I didn't get why his corpse right at the end was sabotaging it by smashing the idol/statue whatever it was that caused it all to end, and even in the wiki I didn't really find an explanation for that. It seems like he set everything up, created a cult that would resurrect him after death, but then when it came to it wouldn't see it through?

Where this worked best for me, and the parts I enjoyed the most, was the actual investigation of the cult - again similar to the investigation of the church in the previous story - the action moves swiftly enough that the prose keeps from becoming too purple, stuff is happening and what is happening is pretty creepy.

So for me it would be a case of uncomfortable, unwieldy opening, interesting middle, baffling end.

[Snowy]

It was a strange one - HPL stories I usually either bounce straight off (some of the more far=out dreamworlds stuff) or devour at a single sitting. I agree with Sly, his bigotry comes barreling to the surface on this one and I found it unpleasant to read. It felt like whenever he let his mind touch on one of the denizens of Red Hook he needed to vent his disgust onto the page. While the language is archaic the hatred and disgust underpinning it are abhorrent.

It also lacks clarity - I maintain that the story seems as much a diatribe against NY as it is a tale of horror. I agree with Sly again on the conclusion of the tale, but rather than just the ceremony the whole piece from Suydam getting inexplicably younger made little sense to me. He starts getting younger, better off, maybe closer to where HPL thinks he fits in the tapestry of society. He arranges to be married, albeit to someone to whom he is related. They go on honeymoon(?) but before they have ventured far from NY both are dead, she has had all her blood drained, and a bunch of ne'er-do-wells come and take his body. Next thing, his body is being reincarnated but has gone back to being old, but at the culmination of the ritual he comes running back, pitches the gold pedestal into the water and promptly explodes.

OK were I to witness something like that it would challenge my sanity, so maybe he is showing a glimpse of madness, but I just struggled to understand the 'why' behind all Suydam's actions.

Chuckles? I had a good laugh at Suydam being Dutch - I mean, how could anything good come of that? Also the descriptions of the denizens of Red Hook lurking in shadowed doorways playing cheap instruments of music had me laughing.

[Stormbringer]

Sorry I haven't made the opportunity to post up my thoughts yet. I have a theory about the end which I shall share in due course.

[Stormbringer]

Right, here we go.

Confession: I actually really like this story! Every time I read it (I think I've read it 3/4 times now) I discover new layers and details that I previously missed, and picture the goings on more vividly. I liked how, unusually for Lovecraft, it was set up as a police procedural, even including the classic trope where the main detective is temporarily taken off the case!

Okay, yes, what we see here on one level is the vehemently-expressed disgust at New York City's urban squalor and presence of brown-skinned, non-English-speaking peoples. This was a reality that Lovecraft's closeted upbringing in gentrified, leafy Providence ill-prepared him for, and it shows in abundance. As you've noted, Sly, Lovecraft's (ironically Jewish) wife, Sonia Greene, observed that her husband's RAGE levels went through the roof when forced to confront the stark reality that other types of homo sapien could be found wandering New York City's streets -- types not fitting with his idealised concept of well-bred, well-mannered Englishness. A lot of Lovecraft's horror is, amusingly, dependent on the idea that he assumes his readers are as terrified of "others" as he is.

Unfortunate as the xenophobia is (and this is, arguably, his most concentrated dose of it in any tale), I still think there's a great creepy story going on behind it. I do enjoy, as Snowy mentioned, how, not only is there a sinister cult of Asians abroad and ever-growing in the slums of NYC, but at the head of the sinister operation is a DUTCHMAN! Foreigners coming to America, bringing their sinister religions and taking over what were once Christian church-buildings is bad enough, but the TRUE horror here is that their ring-leader is Dutch!

As an aside, I don't quite understand Lovecraft's Dutch aversion (might be worth doing some research on) but it's very funny if you don't get too offended by it. Also, take note, Robert Suydam lives on Martense Street. The Martense family were those hybrid, subterranean horrors from The Lurking Fear, which was set in rural New York state.

Snowy mentioned he was disappointed by the fact this was not really a "mythos" tale, and that's understable on one level. Lovecraft certainly does not delve into his own home-grown mythology here, but instead grounds the horror of Red Hook in an unholy, eclectic blend of real-world, syncretistic folklore, witchcraft, superstition, myth, occult lore and religious esoterica, most of which (so I have read) he traced back to a couple of articles (one on Demonlogy, the other on Magic) from the 9th Edition of the Encylopedia Britannica. I actually like this approach, because I feel it gives the story a darker, grittier, more "believeable" edge. If foreigners are worshipping the fictional Nyarlathotep, it's not quite as terrible-seeming as if they're worshipping real-world demon-queens, such as Lilith or Hecate! Maybe that's just personal preference.

One of Lovecraft's story-telling approaches, as you will have observed, is that he often invites his readers to read the horror "between the lines" of his tales. He offers (often massively obvious) suggestions as to what has happened, rather than explaining it in great detail. You piece together the true terror of events from these hints, and ocassionally there'll be an italic ending which will be the biggest clue of all, if not the downright revealed truth! However, it seems on this occassion, the spaces "between the lines" are quite wide. Yes, you get the strong idea that these creepy foreigners are kidnapping local children and using them for strange blood sacrifices and terrible rites that involve mutant/demon babies (and worse, mutant/demon cats!), but the details are sparse and left to the imagination (which I find effective). Once again, there is a description of a church interior with signs of "not-quite-rightness", including a strange altar and...

crudely painted panels he did not like—panels which depicted sacred faces with peculiarly worldly and sardonic expressions, and which occasionally took liberties that even a layman’s sense of decorum could scarcely countenance.

...very similar to The Haunter of the Dark, eh?

As for the goings on with Robert Suydam, I admit that the ending is confusing and the gaps "between the lines" are so wide as to leave the reader totally befuddled. On one hand, I can see why this is frustrating. On another, I think it only adds to the "weirdness" of the tale, and I quite like that. You know weird shit is going down, and the fact that you don't know what exactly this entails only makes it weirder, and creepier. At least that is how I see it.

If I could hazard a guess, I would say that the obvious Suydam narrative is this:

Robert Suydam is a Dutch (and therefore by nature unspeakably awful and totally evil) occultist whose research into the magical and religious folklore of various Asiatic people-groups has led him to believe he has discovered a ritual whereby he can gain eternal life, eternal youth, or perhaps "godhood" by a "marriage" to a goddess, who seems to be a chimerical amalgam of Lilith (from Jewish/Mesopotamian legend) and Hecate (from Greek mythology). To enable this ritual to happen, he needs a lot of blood sacrifices -- perhaps of human children -- on a massive scale. Unable to achieve this by himself, he forms a cult of those he can convince to get on board with his scheme, appealing to aspects of their own beliefs to unite them together as one syncretised body. Perhaps he promises that they will all benefit from this project -- "some god or great priesthood had promised them unheard-of powers and supernatural glories and rulerships in a strange land." He uses the underground canal network beneath Red Hook to smuggle the cult-members from overseas into New York, organises them to get work here and there and blend in, while he conducts worship rites with them in the buildings throughout Red Hook, and meanwhile organises the kidnappings of children to use in his diabolical experiments.

Now, here is where my personal theory of the ending kicks in. At a certain point in the story, apparently Suydam's experiments show signs of paying off; through unholy, supernatural means (and perhaps due to a lot of innocent blood spilled) he regains his youth as the aging process is reversed. Perhaps this is as far as he wants his experiments to go. He's got his youth back, now he plans to leave New York behind and sail off to Europe to enjoy the fruit of his labour: a regained (possibly eternal) youth. However, I believe he either failed to understand, or tried to escape from, the true cost of his gift: that he is to be literally wedded to Lilith/Hecate eternally in her daemonic realm. Perhaps he thought he could just marry somebody else and walk away from everything, scot-free. Perhaps if he consumates the marriage to his Dutch relative, the contract with Lilith is made null and void; he keeps his youth, but avoids having to pay for it. But Lilith made sure the price was paid in full by visiting him on his wedding night and claiming what was hers by right (and rite). Robert and his human bride are murdered in their wedding bed by Lilith, before her cultists come to collect his corpse (and his wife's blood) and take them back through the canals for the REAL wedding -- the wedding of the reanimated corpse of Robert to the demon-queen herself! The magic that reversed his ageing now gone, Robert's corpse is as aged and corpulent as it was before. The cultists, who collected Mrs. Suydam's blood in bottles, pour some of this blood out as a libation offering at Lilith's feet, and she promptly drinks the rest of it -- consuming the life of the woman Robert attempted to marry, perhaps (as I've said) to get out of his dreadful pact.

Through a further ceremony, the corpse of Robert is reanimated (“Lilith, Great Lilith, behold the Bridegroom!”), allowing the unholy nuptials to begin. Realising his error and foolishness, all too late, Robert makes one last, desperate dash to escape his ultimate doom: he will push the golden pedestal (which seems to act as a beacon through which Lilith and her unholy realm can manifest in the world) into the dark well in the basement of the building, which will break the spell and send Lilith and her diabolical entourage back into the darkness from whence she was called forth. He achieves this, just before his corpse falls apart, and the nightmare is ended. He escapes from his fate, but at dreadful cost, and the cult that Suydam assembled, alarmingly, lives on...

Personally, I think it's a really gripping story of supernatural evil which has been too readily dismissed due to its all too blatant xenophobia! Maybe that is what it deserves, but there's something about it I do find quite genuinely compelling.


P.S. FUN FACT:

The Greek inscription on the wall of the cult church, which is chanted during the necromantic reanimation of Robert, and repeated at the end of the story, is a slight distortion of a quote from one of the Church Fathers, Hippolytus of Rome, who was a prominent theologian during the 2nd/3rd centuries. He wrote a treatise entitled Refutation of All Heresies, in which he describes in detail of various pagan cults that existed in the Roman world of Late Antiquity, and why they were wrong. He describes the cult who worship Hecate, and says they chant the following words during their rituals:

Infernal, and earthy, and supernal Bombo, come!
Saint of streets, and brilliant one, that strays by night;
Foe of radiance, but friend and mate of gloom;
In howl of dogs rejoicing, and in crimson gore,
Wading 'mid corpses through tombs of lifeless dust,
Panting for blood; with fear convulsing men.
Gorgo, and Mormo, and Luna, and of many shapes,
Come, propitious, to our sacrificial rites!

Lovecraft's version, which I believe he took directly from the Encyclopedia Britannica, goes:

O friend and companion of night, thou who rejoicest in the baying of dogs and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favourably on our sacrifices!