Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
These revisions include a few of great interest to HPL fans, 13 April 2003
One of the means by which Lovecraft supported himself was in revising stories written by younger, would-be writers. These revisions are problematic because it is virtually impossible to say how much of Lovecraft himself is to be found in them. I believe that, with a few exceptions, the master of the macabre did not lend much of his influence in the retelling of these inferior tales, but a certain few of them do possess sufficient traces of Lovecraft to make them of interest to those followers in his footsteps. Oddly enough, the two stories that actually list Lovecraft as co-author, The Crawling Chaos and The Green Meadow, are the worst of the bunch. Both of these Elizabeth Berkeley stories are flights of fancy which forego any real plot in favor of lofty, dream-enshrouded flights of fancy which cannot even begin to compare to the Dunsanian, dream-cycle myths that Lovecraft perfected on his own. William Lumley’s The Diary of Alonzo Typer is a rather formulaic tale of ancient evil and the discovery of a stranger’s ancestral lineage upon his return to the home of a dead forebear. It gives lip service to such Lovecraftian gods as Shub-Niggurath but falls short of dramatically gripping the reader. Wilfred Blanch Talman’s Two Black Bottles is another unoriginal attempt to horrify the reader by invoking a soul-reclaiming restless spirit from the confines of a dark, defiled church’s cemetery; this story succeeds rather well but possesses no real pizzazz. Adolphe de Castro contributes The Electric Executioner, a rather enjoyable story that cannot but ultimately disappoint in regards to its highly improbably ending.The revised work of two authors, Hazel Heald and Zealia Bishop, do merit a closer look. Not only are their tales enjoyable and reasonably well-crafted, they do bear certain imprints of the master revisionist’s singular hand. Heald’s Winged Death has nothing at all to do with the Cthulhu Mythos, instead offering the chronicles of a scientist’s mad, wretched, and ultimately self-destructive plot to ingeniously kill a colleague whom he accuses of discrediting his work. Heald’s other tale, The Horror in the Museum, does attain a nice level of creepiness and a touch of cosmic horror. The museum in question is a wax museum, and the strange owner suggests that his distinctly horrible wax figures are more than mere wax. The protagonist, whose friendly interest in the singular artist turns to concern and fear at his increasingly mad utterings, agrees to spend a night alone in the dark museum, surrounded by horrible waxen figures and only two doors away from a creature the artist makes incredible claims about, eventually stating that it is a beast he has called down from Yuggoth itself, a beast through which the return of the Old Ones to Earth can be secured. There is plenty of Cthulhian chanting and references to be found in this story, although it does not follow the letter of the original Mythos. Zealia Bishop’s tales also convey Mythos elements, yet her stories take the reader to Mexico and underneath the plains of Oklahoma, transplanting the abodes of ancient otherworldly creatures beneath the ground and reinterpreting the Mythos references in a Mexican-Spanish tradition. The Curse of Yig invokes a snake-devil of Indian legendry who exacts a most bitter revenge on those who would harm his children among the snake population, one much more malign and vengeful than death itself. The Oklahoma setting of The Curse of Yig is greatly expounded upon in the most significant tale of this collection, Bishop’s The Mound. An ancient mound is guarded by Indian spirits, and all white settlers who have dared explore the area have either returned no more or returned as raving madmen. A scientist of the twentieth century cannot be expected to put stock in such tales, though, so our protagonist vows to explore the mound and finally uncover its secrets. In a major discovery, he comes across a centuries-old account of a sixteenth century Spanish explorer who claims to have journeyed into an alien world underneath the mound, one where some well-known Lovecraftian otherworldy gods are spoken of, remembered, and worshipped. It is rather fascinating to see a sort of conflated Mythos cosmology transplanted deep beneath the earth and to read of references to ancient gods such as Tulu that correlate with the Great Cthulhu. Among the revisions in this collection, The Mound most clearly bears the influence of Lovecraft himself, and while one should by no means place it in the canon of his horrific literature, it does hold a power sure to hypnotize the seekers of Lovecraftian knowledge with its implications and parallel take on the Mythos itself.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nobody Does It Better, But..., 12 Jun 1998
By A Customer
I'm not sure how much input Lovecraft had in these stories as Carrol & Graf give absolutely no information regarding where the revisions are. Two writers (represented by 5 stories) Hazel Heald and Zealia Bishop really do show some talent, but they are at their best when they are not doing Lovecraftian-style writing. I guess I got spoiled by "The Annotated Lovecraft", edited by S.T. Joshi. There is no lack of info. in that book, (merely a lack of stories).
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3.0 out of 5 stars
some gems to be found, 10 April 2009
This rather patchy collection is definitely not the place to start investigating Lovecraft's work. If you are new to HPL go and read the recent Gollancz "Necronomicon" first, then come back here.
Most of Lovecraft's earnings came not through his own fiction but from revising the works of other authors. "The Horror in the Museum" contains 24 such revisions, divided into two categories. The "primary" revisions feature a lot of input from HPL, some being completely re-written by him from an idea by the original author; these stories form the bulk of the book. The remainder of the volume consists of "secondary" revisions, in which it is thought that Lovecraft's contribution was to tidy up the original prose.
Let's deal with the less attractive features of the book first: First of all it has to be said that the majority of the stories fall well below the standards of HPLs own work. The "secondary" revisions in particular reflect the lesser literary gifts of their writers. Much more disappointing, however is the lengthy "primary" revision "The Last Test", which Lovecraft authority S.T. Joshi states- though I can scarcely believe- was re-written by HPL from an original draft by Adolphe de Castro. This tale is tedious, badly written and filled with just about every tired cliche imaginable.
Equally galling is the spectre of racism which infects several of the stories, especially "Medusa's Coil". The knowledge that such attitudes reflect the culture of HPLs time does not make them any less lazy or more attractive.
So why should confirmed Lovecraft fans want this volume, apart from completion? A minor reason is the attractive presentation, but the real reason is that it contains (to my mind) seven stories which not only have the stamp of genuine Lovecraft about them, but are also of sufficient quality to merit inclusion in his own body of work. Two are dream-like prose poems, not dissimilar to "Nyarlathotep" and the remaining five fit comfortably into the "Cthulhu Mythos". These latter are the short "The Curse of Yig" and the lengthy "The Mound" (credited to Zealia Bishop); "The Horror in the Museum" and "Out of the Aeons" (credited to Hazel Heald) and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer" (credited to William Lumley). All these appear to be Lovecraft originals in all but name.
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by H. P. Lovecraft
by H.P. Lovecraft
by H.P. Lovecraft
