The Tomb and Other Tales

by H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth

Collection of stories from this master of horror fiction. Most were first published between 1919 and 1939. Includes The Tomb, The Festival, Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, He, The Horror at Red Hook, The Strange High House in the Mist, In the Walls of Eryx, The Evil Clergyman, The Beast in the Cave, The Alchemist, Poetry and the Gods, The Street, The Transition of Juan Romero, Azathoth, The Descendant, The Book, and The Thing in the Moonlight.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Classics, Lovecraftian, Cthulhu Mythos

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Tomb tells the eerie tale of Jervas Dudley, a shy and curious boy who spends most of his time daydreaming in his lonesome. Being the curious fellow he is, he develops an obsession with the mysterious tomb belonging to the Hyde family, whose nearby mansion had burnt down hundreds of years ago. After failing to break into the tomb, Jervas falls asleep by the entrance. His dreams are haunted by horrific ghostly visions of the family's secret history of debauchery, blasphemy and other forms of wickedness. After being terrified by nightmarish visions of the family and learning the truth of how their house burnt down, he uncovers a key to the tomb in which he discovers a burial with his name on it. Curious Jervas soon learns the meaning of curiosity killed the cat.

Though not the first story Lovecraft ever wrote, it was the first one ever accepted for professional publication. A glimpse into a familiar theme that Lovecraft masters in his later works. The theme of knowledge destroying an isolated and curious protagonist. The danger of looking for secrets not meant to be discovered. Fear of the unknown; the possible existence of higher powers and beings whose intellect far surpass our own. The story feels more gothic horror than cosmic horror, more like something Poe would write as it relies on dark family histories and occultist imagery without directly referencing the cosmos, elder gods, or other typical Lovecraftian things. Very eerie and vivid for such an early work.

Also included in this collection are lesser known creepy tales such as Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, The Thing in the Moonlight, The Strange High House in the Mist, The Alchemist and The Festival.

My rating: 3.6/5

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume of The Tomb and Other Tales came into my possession as part of a collection of Lovecraft paperbacks four decades ago. (It was my introduction to the author.) Each book had striking cover art by John Holmes — a different grotesque head on every cover. This book’s cover was the most horrific — a blindly staring, white-eyed head splitting open, despite straining against the padlocked iron band around it, as a hoard of red-demon bats force their way out of the split. It was because of its cover that I read this book first. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great place to start reading Lovecraft.

This is a collection best read by Lovecraft fans and aficionados, not by new readers. There are no stories directly connected to his Cthulhu Mythos here, but instead a collection of Lovecraftian odds and ends. There are a couple nicely creepy tales, though they aren’t his best. Then there is the story that was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini, which is interesting historical trivia, but otherwise a sub par tale. There are a couple of stories Lovecraft wrote in collaboration with others (one of which is a long SciFi story). Also included are several stories Lovecraft wrote as a teen, (one written when he was just 14). The book finishes with several fragments that were never fully developed into stories.

The booby-prize of this collection is the inclusion of some of Lovecraft’s most virulently racist stories, The Horror at Red Hook, and The Street (not that his unfortunate racism isn’t peppered throughout many other of his tales). If you chose to skip them you won’t miss much. Fans of Lovecraft’s work must always reckon with the fact that this man who was a seminal influence on the horror genre was also pathologically racist, and the main value of these stories is not letting us forget that.

So, if you’ve never read Lovecraft, don’t start here. But if you’re a Lovecraft aficionado you’ll definitely want to read it. For anyone not already a Lovecraft fan subtract a star from my rating. But damn! That sure was some intensely creepy cover art!


The Tomb: Jervas Dudley, the original goth kid, develops an unhealthy obsession with the Hyde family tomb and nearby abandoned, burned mansion — an obsession leading to madness or worse.
”I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would someday force an entrance to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me.”
”Henceforward, I haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never reveal.”
4 ⭐️

The Festival: An atmospheric tale of an ancient unclean and unholy festival secretly observed in underground vaults in quaint New England.
”It was the Yuletide that men call Christmas, though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.”
3 1/2 ⭐️

Imprisoned with the Pharaohs This was a commissioned story, ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. A stage magician travels to Africa and is kidnapped by an Arab tour guide after a midnight fist fight on top of a pyramid. He is bound and imprisoned, and effects a unique escape from an unholy nightmare.
”Then the dream faces took on human resemblances, and I saw my guide in the robes of a king with the sneer of the sphinx on his features…It was of these, of Khafre and his consort and his strange armies of the hybrid dead that I dreamed.”
2 ⭐️

He: Lovecraft here played with autobiography, — the young narrator, so disgusted and traumatized by NYC that he sees it as a repellent, dead thing, is a mirror of Lovecraft during his brief, traumatic residence there. It’s a truly weird tale, where the strange factor keeps amping up as the narrator follows a creepy guide who shows him secrets of the city, its colonial past and alien future. After that all hell breaks lose.
3 1/2 ⭐️

The Horror at Red Hook: This convoluted and overwrought tale grew from Lovecraft’s pathological racial panic triggered during his brief residence in NYC. An Irish policeman is broken by his investigations into criminal cult activity, with the evil cultist being “debased” dark skinned people, with an emphasis on Asiatic and African races, though Italians and Greeks are lumped in as well.
1 ⭐️

The Strange, High House in the Mist: An impossible, ancient house sits high on an inaccessible cliff in the mists above Kingsport. The locals fear it, will not so much as view it with telescopes. But a visiting philosopher, bored with the day to day, ignores the local lore, scales the cliff, and pays a call. He comes back…at least part of him does.
”And patriarchs dread lest someday, one by one they seek out that inaccessible peak in the sky and learn what centuried secrets hide beneath the steep, shingled roof which is part of the rocks and the stars, and the ancient fears of Kingsport that those venturesome youths will come back they do not doubt, but they think a light may be gone from their eyes, and a will from their hearts.”
3 ⭐️

In the Walls of Eryx: (written with Kenneth J. Sterling) A SciFi story of Earth prospectors who mine the planet Venus for crystals that produce electrical power. A native race of lizard men revere the crystals and hinder the mining effort.
2 1/2 ⭐️

The Evil Clergyman: More a fragment than a story, this was a dream Lovecraft had and wrote up in a letter to his friend. It was published after his death. The menacing image of the clergyman burning his magic books and preparing to hang himself, and the transformation in the mirror at the end might have made a good story.
3 ⭐️

The Beast in the Cave: (Lovecraft juvenilia written when he was just 14) Lost in a cavern, his torch gone out, the protagonist battles an unseen beast in the darkness.
2 ⭐️

The Alchemist: A very early teenage tale — a story of revenge and generational curses. After a French nobleman unjustly executed an alchemist of evil reputation, the alchemist’s son revenged his father’s murder and pronounced a curse that none of the nobleman’s progeny would outlive his 32 years. Six hundred years later, the last descendant of that short lived line of noblemen is approaching his 32nd birthday.
3 ⭐️

Poetry and the Gods: (written with Anna Helen Crofts) A young woman dreams of Zeus who informs her that the gods have long be asleep and dreaming, but that she would be the poet who were herald their reawakening.
”As she read on, her surroundings gradually faded, and soon, there lay about her only the mists of Dream, the purple, star-strewn mists beyond time, where only gods and dreamers walk.”
3 ⭐️

The Street: In addition to being virulently racist, Lovecraft was also anti-immigrant and anti-labor, and this little parable (inspired by his horror of the Boston Police Strike of 1919) was his expression of that backwards bile. Unfortunately, Lovecraft fit right in to a “basket of deplorables.”
1 ⭐️

The Transition of Juan Romero: (Fragment) This is actually a complete story, but a sort of writing exercise that Lovecraft tossed off in a day. He never allowed it to be published and never showed it to anyone until very near the end of his life.
”Out of the darkness immediately ahead burst a final shriek from the Mexican which was joined by such a chorus of uncouth sound that I could never hear again and survive. In that moment it seemed as if all the hidden terrors and monstrosities of Earth had become articulate in an effort to overwhelm the human race.”
3 1/2 ⭐️

Azathoth: (Fragment) This dream fragment has the feel of Lord Dunsany’s influence about it.
”There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight, glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy with perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, lighten by suns that the eye may never behold, and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea nymphs of unrememnnerable deeps.”
3 ⭐️

The Descendant: (Fragment)
”Perhaps he held within his own half explored brain that cryptic link which would awaken him to elder and future lives in forgotten dimensions which would bind him to the stars, and to the infinities and eternities beyond them.”
2 1/2 ⭐️

The Book: (Fragment)
”Not for centuries had any man recalled its vital substance or known where to find it. But this book was very old, indeed. No printing press, but the hand of some half-crazed monk had traced these ominous Latin phrases in awesome antiquity.”
3 ⭐️

The Thing in the Moonlight (Fragment) taken from a letter to a friend.
”On November 24, 1927, for I know not even what the year may be now, I fell asleep and dreamed, since when I have been unable to awaken.”
”I was aware that I only dreamed, but the very awareness was not pleasant. Since that fearful night I have prayed only for awakening. It has not come. Instead I have found myself an inhabitant of this terrible dream world.”
4 ⭐️

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the very first Lovecraft book I read, while I was still pre-pubescent and innocent. In fact, I was so young that I didn’t understand a lot of the vocabulary, and really didn’t “get” several of the stories until many years later. I remember just letting the flow of words wash over me and not worrying about what was going on. Today, I would admit that this seems like sort of an “odds and ends” collection, more for the Lovecraft completist than an introductory text, but it worked well enough for me at the time. Below, I will review each story (or group of stories) separately.

The title story is “The Tomb,” obviously, although I’m not sure why that was picked to represent the collection; it’s neither the best nor the longest. I suppose someone at Del Rey thought that a story titled “The Tomb” would appeal more to horror fans than “The Festival” or “In the Walls of Eryx.” Anyway, it is a good, simple, chilling tale of necromancy and a cursed family line, with some bawdy poetry thrown in for good measure. Interestingly, this is also the story where the band Darkest of the Hillside Thickets got their name. It’s a very early example of Lovecraft, published the same year (1917) as “Dagon,” his first published story.

Next comes “The Festival,” which has always been my favorite from this collection, and was at one time my favorite HPL story of all (today “The Colour Out of Space” holds that title). I recall that I was able to keep up with the plot when I was a child, despite the vocabulary, and I really liked the description of the underground cave beneath the church, which fit my idea of a D&D dungeon really nicely. This was written in 1923, by which time HPL was beginning to sort out some of the typical elements of his stories, and this one introduces the Byakhees and also the Necronomicon. It is set at “the Yuletide, which men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, than Memphis and mankind,” so it makes good Solstice reading.

The third story is “Imprisoned with the Pharoahs,” which is credited to HPL and Harry Houdini. Actually, as I understand it HPL basically ghost-wrote it for Houdini, with minimal input. It was written in 1924, and represents a bit of a diversion from Lovecraft’s narrative trajectory, especially in the sense of having a rather heroic, married (!), manly narrator (Houdini himself). It draws on Egyptian mythology to create a horror somewhat more sophisticated than the “Mummy” movies of the 1930s. Still, in the end, when you figure out what the ultimate horror really is (and this took me several readings as an adult), it is more likely to produce mirth than chills. The lead-in horror is a good deal more grotesque and bizarre, fortunately.

The next story is “He,” from 1925, and represents one of Lovecraft’s efforts to incorporate his period of living in New York City into his tales. It doesn’t work all that well, something about New York just doesn’t work for Lovecraft’s style of horror, and it tended to bring out his racist, anti-immigrant sentiments more forcefully. Still, it’s an interesting experiment, with an evil sorcerer and the powers he calls forth terrorizing a young aesthete.

“The Horror at Red Hook,” from the same year, is probably the better-known of his New York stories, and it really reeks of xenophobia, but manages to be somewhat more cosmic in its implications, suggesting the ways that Lovecraft’s writing was becoming focused on perils to all of humanity, rather than simple chills from individual terrors. This is the story that gives us the famous “baying of dogs and spilt blood” quote that is so adored in the gothic and black metal communities. Once again, he tried for a somewhat more typically heroic protagonist, with mixed results, and again the villain is a powerful sorcerer or cult leader.

Next is “The Strange High House in the Mist,” from 1926 (the year HPL wrote “The Call of Cthulhu”). This is to my mind a more typical Lovecraft story, with a professor of philosophy as its protagonist and an isolated New England setting. At first, it appears less cosmic, as only the protagonist appears affected by the evil, but the end implies that something more sweeping may threaten the community, or even the world. The descriptions of the house and its surroundings are lovely, although the descriptions of the menace are rather more vague.

The longest story, “In the Walls of Eryx” is probably the least typical story Lovecraft ever wrote. It came out in 1935, almost at the end of his life, and after his magnum opus, “The Shadow out of Time,” had already been published. It is an experiment with fairly typical science fiction, although with inevitable Lovecraft twists. The protagonist is a mineral scavenger on a recently-colonized Venus, who battles reptiloid aliens with a hand flamer for energy-providing crystals to ship back to Earth. Those aliens manage to trap him in a very unique kind of maze, and only slowly does he come to appreciate their cunning and his own helplessness. It’s really not my favorite of Lovecraft’s work, and in some ways it represents I think his own sense that the “Cthulhu mythos” was already played out before he died, but that he just couldn’t come up with anything else quite so grandiose and effective. It is interesting, but more in the sense that a Lovecraft fan should consider it in the context of all his other work, not so much as a story on its own.

The last of the published works in this volume is “The Evil Clergyman,” which was also the last story Lovecraft wrote. It is a very short tale of identity-swapping (a common theme in Lovecraft), with a brief flashback to the career of an apostate. But, basically the story is of a man alone in a room, and in that it reminds me of some of Bierce’s horror-satires, which may be what HPL was trying for. If so, he didn’t – quite – pull it off, but it is interesting to see how HPL handles the very short format he works with here.

After the published tales are two sections: “Early Tales” and “Fragments” of pieces that didn’t see print in Lovecraft’s lifetime. The “Early Tales” were mostly written when he was very young, and they show some promise, but aren’t all that effective on their own. I rather liked “The Street,” which, while it expresses all of Lovecraft’s conservatism and xenophobia, also shows his ongoing passion for colonial New England and its survival in architecture. Probably most people will consider “The Transition of Juan Romero,” which I guess was the latest of these efforts, to be the most successful, in that it again deals with themes of identity-loss and cosmic horror. Also worth mentioning is “The Beast in the Cave,” which is an early example of HPL’s concern with human degredation and degeneracy.

The “Fragments” were apparently notes made by Lovecraft about his dreams, which were intended to be fleshed into stories at some future point. In that sense, they are tantalizing and image-laden. I especially like “The Thing in the Moonlight” which seemed a kind of meeting-point between his Dream Quest and his Cthulhu Mythos tales. Also “The Book” gives us some insights into the back story of (perhaps!) the Necronomicon. This section is followed by a chronology of Lovecraft’s stories, written by the author himself, which has been useful to me in placing his stories in context in this review and in others.

[Ευθυμία Δεσποτάκη · Rating 4 out of 5]

Αν εξαιρέσεις ένα δυο προβλήματα στη μετάφραση (ευτυχώς όχι περισσότερα) ήταν ένα ξεκούραστο και ξέγνοιαστο κλασσικό ανάγνωσμα.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains a series of short stories by HP Lovecraft. I can't say that they were fantastic but it was interesting to read more of Lovecraft's work. The book is broken down into some of his classics, some of his work that he wrote as a late teen to his 20's and then some fragments of dreams he had that were never ultimately turned into stories. He does have a pretty basic theme, that being stories of creatures/ beings that come from some primordial past and infect or debase the minds of people who choose to explore the Satanic or even older beings and religions. Lovecraft never seems to go into great detail about these beings/ creatures, rather he leaves it for the reader to come up with his own images. The characters in the stories often start off by saying something like fearing to go into detail as what they have witnessed is too horrible to describe. There are a couple of different stories in the midst, one involving Harry Houdini in Egypt, which I found quite interesting and one involving an incident on the planet Venus which was nicely different. All in all, I think it's worth trying to find and read Lovecraft's work. This is the third book of his stories, two of short stories and one novel that I've read and his style and story - telling are quite unique. 3.5 stars.

[Serge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avg: 2.73/5

The Tomb: 3.5/5
This is the first Lovecraftian story I read. At first, I wasn't sure where the story was going, but through it's progression, it became clear that the lines between reality and hallucination were being blurred and that is an aspect I enjoy in some fiction. The story had a nice philosophical point of view on people who only believe what their physical faculties allow them to observe which leaves open the possibility of mystical supernatural phenomenon being real and it leaves us with the question of whether the main character is truly mentally ill or if he is indeed gifted with the ability to have direct connection with supernatural elements in the world around him and an ability to have correspondence with the dead. The chilling atmosphere created by Lovecraft when the main character "enters" the famous tomb was also enjoyable. Overall, an interesting trip into the psyche of a disturbed (or gifted?) character.

The Festival: 3.5/5
I really enjoyed the descriptive writing style of this story. The line between reality and hallucination is also blurred, similarly to The Tomb, but we have a much more active environment in which terrifying things are occurring. I would have preferred if the end of this "nightmare" had a more frightening conclusion, perhaps some physical confrontation with a scarier descriptiveness, but overall, the story was really engaging and leaves us wanting to know more about the truth behind the town of Kingsport.

Imprisoned with the Pharaohs: 2/5
An exotic trip to Egypt, this story gives us a dark and twisted version of ancient Egyptian culture and beliefs. The oriental world of this North African country which is full of thousands of years of complex history from the days of the pharaohs to the Greco-Roman conquest and Arab rule is explored during this trip, with Lovecraft making sure to mention all of the facets of the events that took place on this land. Although rich in cultural references and a skilled use of ancient Egyptian mythology to describe a unique horror narrative, this story felt slow, drowning the reader in long descriptions of the trip at the expense of excitement. The pull of intrigue Lovecraft has on the reader is still present as it always has been so far in this collection of short stories, but the sea of details and the final climax of the story felt too predictable and unsatisfying. The blur between reality and imagination that Lovecraft seems to enjoy utilizing is still there, but not as skilfully used as in the prior two short stories in my opinion. I also would have personally preferred him mentioning that he ended up being found outside the pyramid and the police not finding a man that matched the description of the deceptive guide at the very end of the story, since this revelation that took place before the end further removed the suspense of what was going to happen later, which was one thing that i was curious about. A positive aspect of this story is how it demonstrates Lovecraft's ability to immerse us in detailed worlds that are vastly different from each other, some taking place in the West and others in places such as Egypt where the culture and way of life distinctly differ from that of Europe. He is skilled at immersing the reader into the worlds he makes use of.

He: 3/5
Being written at the start of the 20th century, I assume this is Lovecraft's way of describing how the older, more tranquil and reflective days were being replaced by the modern and busy city life where everyone is obsessed with the urban demands of work and productivity. The protagonist describes his failed attempts to allow the city of New York to awaken poetic inspirations in him, but instead, he is greeted with the hollowness of the modern urban life. This was also the first Lovecraft story I read which directly described something pretty disturbing and scary, when the old man begins to decay and turns into a black head with bulging eyes. I enjoyed how the story ended up with a descent into madness and chaos, in a way that seemed to be more intense than the last 3 stories I've read. Where it falls short however, is maintaining that mystique and intrigue throughout the story the same way The Tomb or The Festival did. With those ones, the entirety of the story had that creepy allure, but the conclusions weren't as intensely disturbing as this story, in my opinion at least. The signature Lovecraftian blur between what is real and what is hallucination is also present in this story, since by the end of it, we are left wondering if any of what happened was real, or just another hallucination.

The Horror at Red Hook: 3/5
Reading this was a weird ride, since the beginning of the story gave me nothing but general disinterest, the climax a "oh, not this again" reaction, but the end of the story somehow overshadowed my initial lukewarm reaction and I ended up having a positive impression on the story overall. At the beginning, the way he described a modern city with "mysterious horrors" lurking underneath felt too cliche and uninteresting. I also caught a distinct feel of anti-immigration and a closed off attitude towards newcomers in the country, since he seemed to favour the European inhabitants of the city as opposed to the immigrants who spoke different dialects which he finds annoying. His reference of Yezidis as satanic primitive tribes has a narrow-minded view to it, even if it's only fiction, since he paints non-western culture as somehow antagonistic, but I assume that was a norm for an American guy back then. The climax underneath the cellar felt too similar to the one in "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", where the protagonist was just idly observing atrocities taking place, being described in over the top literary language. As usual, we end the story not being so certain on whether what happened was imagination or reality which gives me the impression that Lovecraft tends to recycle old ideas in several different stories. However, the creepiness of the ending and the more evident links that might imply that what happened was indeed reality gave a spooky feel to the story which I enjoyed, so the ending redeemed this story for me which I would have otherwise given a lower rating.

The Strange High House in the Mist: 2/5
This story takes place in the same location as The Festival. Kingsport seems to be a very interesting town and I liked the connection between this story and The Festival. This makes me wonder if all of Lovecraft's stories take place in the same universe. However, the story itself here felt boring to me. The lore and world development were a bit on the lazy end, with things being a bit too vague. We mainly know that this cottage on the cliff has an entity that steals people's sense of adventure and wonder once they visit it and that part of their soul remains there as evident by the increased laughter the others here from that cottage (though I don't know how they would hear it from such a great distance). However, the vagueness of the story and it's oversimplicity didn't really impress me, but a nice revisit to Kingsport and a nice mention of the hospital next to the graveyard where the protagonist of The Festival was at the end of that story.

In the Walls of Eryx: 4.5/5
A refreshing change to the previous stories and the first sci-fi story I read by Lovecraft! Despite it being lengthy, I was completely drawn to the story and actively blocked out any distraction to fully immerse myself. Lovecraft does a great job creating a highly interesting world in set on the planet Venus. The mysterious reptilian race, the mirage plants, other types of wildlife and a mysterious history which we never completely unravel, which leaves me craving more of this world. This story does an excellent job in feeling so complete and satisfying yet making me want more. It also sparked my interest in sci-fi and that's saying something since I wasn't interested in this genre before. I believe the world built in this short story could have been developed into an entire novel or perhaps a series. The ending is a very sharp description of human nature and the obsession they have to annihilate everything just to get a treasure they want, in this case, the crystals. What makes this a great read is the fact that the story is fairly straightforward and more or less predictable, but the way it was written hooks you to every step of it.

The Evil Clergyman: 2/5
Spooky and ominous story, but it didn't do more than build a scary atmosphere. I didn't understand why the events took place, what the significance of that light was and what was going on in general. I was going to give it a lower rating but the ending gave an unexpected and somewhat disturbing twist that made the story a slightly better experience for me. I don't have more to say on this story and according to the chronology of Lovecraft's work at the end of this book, this was the last story he ever wrote.

The Beast in the Cave: 3/5
This story started out as very interesting. One thing I notice when reading Lovecraft is that I enjoy his stories way more when he doesn't spend a lot of time drowning the reader in descriptions, mainly describing grotesque and terrifying things using a large array of descriptive language and instead, keeps the plot moving and creating a suspenseful atmosphere that leaves me hanging onto every word. This story was fairly simple, (spoiler alert), a guy gets lost in a cave, thinks he's going to die, hears a creature approaching him, hits it with rocks and manages to escape and find his way back to his group and comes back to inspect the creature. The writing style was so captivating however. The ending was kind of underwhelming to me and it felt like the story built up to a climactic ending that just never came. I liked the idea of this "trap" though, of Lovecraft seducing the reader with excellent storytelling and pacing, only for the ending to be pretty average, though the final revelation of the nature of that beast does have a nice impact.

The Alchemist: 3/5
We now get to the older stories written by Lovecraft. The method of storytelling in this one did a good job in keeping me hooked, wanting to read more and making the experience a smooth one, but the ending felt unsatisfying, since the conclusion of the story felt like lazy writing. The fact that it took centuries for someone to finally discover that old passage underneath the mansion is a bit unrealistic, since I would assume anyone would probably want to explore the entirety of the house they live in. The way Lovecraft treated the whole identity of that sinister man the protagonist found in that secret location as a mystery felt comical, since it was obvious that this man was Charles Le Sorcier. I think anyone with common sense could figure that out. The big “shocking” reveal that abruptly ended the story was the revelation that this man was Charles, which the reader probably already knew, so it ended in an underwhelming way. Another aspect that was hard to believe was the fact that no one managed to break the poison vile before Charles murdered them with it. I was also confused on the method of killing. If Charles’s father was killed with poison and that was the way Charles exacted revenge, why was one of the people murdered killed by an arrow? Also, if Charles was immortal and couldn’t die, how did the protagonist manage to survive and live for 90 years? Not counting these holes of plot logic that I found, the smooth reading experience is what makes me give this a 3-star rating, since I don’t want to judge the entire reading experience with the unsatisfying ending.

Poetry and the Gods: 2/5
A story about a girl who isn’t happy with her bleak and mundane human life and falls asleep while reading poetry and has a dream in which she’s surrounded by ancient deities and is experiencing bliss. The dream is described vividly with literary style. Though the descriptive writing is good, I’m not much of a fan, since I prefer stories with plot progression and action going on. The ending was nice and pleasant. Not a horror story at all, just a descriptive piece.

The Street: 1.5/5
Another story where Lovecraft seems to paint immigration in a negative light, but unlike “He”, this story was on the boring end. It described how an area which was formerly good because of its original inhabitants gradually fell into deterioration because the original inhabitants left, and new foreign ones came in. These foreign inhabitants were sinister and were planning to dismantle the country and most of the story was contrasting the new life of the area with the old one and how terrible the current state was. I felt no suspense or climax or any interesting point in the story, probably because I prefer action/plot driven stories more.

The Transition of Juan Romero: 2.5/5
Another change of setting from the gothic English vibes, this story was centered around Native American/Mexican cultural associations. We also got to see more of Lovecraft’s racist disposition by reading how he called brown skinned Mexicans “ignorant and dirty” in the story. That won’t play a role in my rating however since I’m reviewing the story itself and not the author’s ideologies. The pacing of the story kept it interesting and the mysterious ending was ominous in the usual Lovecraftian way of blurring the lines between dream and reality, but Lovecraft didn’t give us a reason why everything happened and we were left with many questions, like what was under that abyss and the truth behind that ring he had and why everything happened. Sometimes, keeping things unknown adds a good sense of mystery to the story, but at other times, like this one, it just seems like lazy writing which takes away from the quality of the story instead of adding to it.

Incomplete Work: (No Ratings)

Azathoth:
This seems to be a bit similar to Poetry and the Gods, talking about a man sick of mundane city life and dreaming of something more. The descriptive writing was beautiful and I found it more digestible than Poetry and the Gods.

The Descendant:
I enjoyed reading this incomplete story. I’m not sure what the protagonist finding the Necronomicon has to do with Lord Northam suddenly opening up about his life. I was getting into reading his backstory and then the story ended abruptly since it was unfinished. I would’ve liked to see it continue.

The Book:
Another incomplete story I enjoyed. The protagonist finds a book that severs his connection with the material world and allows him to dip in and out of other dimensions. The brief trips he described were exciting. The whole felt like a magical book induced acid trip.

The Thing in the Moonlight:
I really enjoyed this. I enjoy the idea of being stuck in a dream and unable to wake up. I wish Lovecraft expanded on this and perhaps turned it into a novella where the protagonist would have to find a way out of that dream.

[Meem Arafat Manab · Rating 3 out of 5]

খুব ভালো লাগে নাই। শুরুর দিকের কিছু গল্প বেখাপ্পা রকম মুগ্ধ করলেও, পরবর্তী কিছু গল্প যেনো কেমন, ভোতা, গড়পরতায় উঁচুনিচু সঙ্কলন, যদিও সময়ের বিচারে গল্পগুলি ধারাবাহিকভাবেই রাখা এই বইয়ে। গুণে গুণেই বলি, প্রথম গল্প, টুম, বেশ জমানো। দ্বিতীয় গল্প পড়তে সুন্দর, সম্ভবত লাভক্র্যাফটের গদ্য হয় এরকমই, ধরেবেঁধে সুন্দর হতেই হয় তাদের, কিন্তু এই গল্প কেমন নিভে গেলো হটাত।
এরপরের গল্পটা বেশ কৌতূহল-জাগানো, মিশরে ঘটে, বেশ একটা পাকানো গন্ধ, কিন্তু যত গন্ধ তত স্বাদে নয়, এই গল্পও খুব বেশি মুখরোচক হয়ে ওঠে না। এরপররেটা বরং ভালো, দ্বিতীয় গল্পটার মতন, কিন্তু আরেকটু জমে ওঠা। এরপর রেড হুকে একটা গল্প আছে দারুণ, পাহাড়ের কোণায় একটা গল্প, বাজে, বুধ গ্রহে একটা গল্প, এই লোক যে সাইন্স ফিকশনে হাত দিচ্ছিলেন জানতাম না, সেটা বেশ দারুণ আবারো, শেষ গল্পটা, আবারো বাজে।
শেষে লাভক্র্যাফটের প্রথম জীবনের কিছু লেখা আছে, বেশ ভালো লেখা, বিশেষ করে রাস্তা নিয়ে একটা গল্পের কথা আলাদা করে বলতে হয়, কিন্তু বলবো না। বলতে ইচ্ছা হচ্ছে না। এই বই খুব ভালো না লাগার কোনো কারণ ছিলো না, কিন্তু তবুও লাগলো না, হয়ত এখন কিছুই ভালো লাগবে না আর। দিনের পর দিন চলে যাচ্ছে, লেখা যে ছাপাবে না কেউ, সেটা ত মনে হয় কপালে খোদানো ছিলো, কোন্‌ কুক্ষণে যে কম্পিউটার বিজ্ঞানে ভর্তি হইছিলাম, আর সহ্য হচ্ছে না কিছু, কোনোমতে ফাঁক গলে এ জীবন ছেড়ে বের হয়ে যাওয়া যাইত, অন্য কোনো জীবনে, হয় না এরকম, এই জীবনের বড় রাস্তা না হয়ে আমি অন্য কোনো জীবনে, অন্য কোনো জমিনে যদি ফাঁক গলে একটা গলিমতন হয়ে যাইতে পারতাম, কী করে হবো, সাহসে কুলাবে না, এই হবে না, সেই হবে না, লেখা ছাপাবে কেনো, কী যে লিখি আর সেইটা কদ্দূর যে হয় আমি ত জানি সেটা, এই ছিলো ভাগ্যে, এই ছিলো, এই অদ্ভূত একটা বিষয়ে তিন বছর ধরে পড়তেছি, দুই বছর প্রচণ্ড অনিচ্ছার সাথে, কারণ এক বছর ভালো লাগছিলো বলে। লও খেসারত।

লাভক্র্যাফট ভালো মোটের উপর, একটু অগোছালো, কিন্তু লেখা সুন্দর, আর ক্লান্তও করে না, সুতরাং আবার পড়ার আশা রাখি।

এত সুন্দর একটা মলাট বইটায়, আমার কাছে যেটা সেটাতে ঐ মলাটটাই নাই।

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I read some of these stories a long time ago and don't remember them and didn't write any comments. But for most of them I did. But I just finished the last story today so here are my comments.

Azathoth : 7.0 - Very nice. Mopey Lovecraft dreams about a man that is discontented with the world and reality.

He : 7.0 - A man "born in the wrong era" finds that New York haunts him. He meets someone who is actually from the colonial days but has stayed alive through magic. The man shows him the past but the man's enemies come and kill him. Loved the view of ancient earth.

Poetry and the Gods : 6.5 - My idea about beauty breaking down barriers to other realms, similar to Colin Wilson's book. In this one a woman reads poetry and it brings her in contact with the sleeping greek/roman gods and they tell of their imminent return and also that their prophets are poets. Milton, Shakespeare etc... None of the poetry did anything for me so it was kind of hard to relate on that level.

The Alchemist : 6.5 - Guy grows up in rotting old keep. His family has a curse that they die when they turn 32 because they killed an old alchemist. His son actually created eternal youth potion and has lived all these years to kill the ancestors. Standard.

The Beast in the Cave : 6.0 - One of Lovecraft's first. Not bad. Guy gets lost in tunnels, finds creature, turns out to be a man that looks like an ape.

The Book : - Pretty cool little piece. The incantations in the book push the reader through gateway after gateway.

The Descendant : 4.5 - Just a fragment that doesn't really go anywhere. Just the setup.

The Evil Clergyman : 5.5 - Short and not that good. Guys goes in to someone room, encounters his ghost and now looks like the old occupant.

The Horror at Red Hook : 7.5 - Different from most of the other stories. Cults in New York. Trip to hell. Lots of imagery. Pretty cool.

The Street : 7.5 - Totally different from any Lovecraft story I've ever read. I loved the way he told the history of the "Street". But then it seemed like his predjudice problem came out talking about the good anglos and the slant eyed foriegners.

The Thing in the Moonlight : 6.5 - Cool how he included himself in the story since he's such a scary figure.

The Transition of Juan Romero : 6.5 - Not sure why it's called a transition. He just went down in a mine and then died. The bottomless pit thing is scary though.

Imprisoned with the Pharaohs : 8.0 - Harry Hudinnis name, also Under the Prymids. Very cool

In the Walls of Eryx : ? - Don't remember.
The Festival : ? - Don't remember.
The Strange High House in the Mist : ? - Don't remember.
The Tomb : ? - Don't remember.

[Ravenskya · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years the name "Lovecraft" conjured up images in my mind of wading through "Shakespeare's Unknown Works" Although I love horror, I had for some reason always assumed that his works would be a tedious and difficult read. Finally I decided that I really needed to commit myself to attempting to read some Lovecraft. When I read the first of the short stories in this book "The Tomb" I was thrilled to find that it wasn't difficult to read, it was simply beautiful, lyrical writing in a style that we cannot recapture today. His descriptions are bold, vibrant, and well crafted, but easily read.

I had also been under the assumption that all Lovecraft included things with tentacles... again I was wrong, here we had tale after tale of creepy, eerie, mysterious happenings often told through the first person, that are never fully comprehended by the teller of the tales. Possible Vampires, probable witches, maybe ghosts... you are never sure... is the man telling you the tale mad and recounting the horrors of their deranged minds or have they truly stumbled upon ancient horrors so profound that they defy description.

This book contains no gore, just a creepy vibe and a level of uncertainty that sticks with you after you close the book. Lovecraft is a master of the English language, wielding it as a sword and picking at your doubts. Opening scabs of uncertainty... are there terrible books and beings from "before the age of man" that would summon up the most unholy and terrifying of visions?

I am told that this is NOT one of the stronger collections that you could buy (I read it first because Amazon shipped it first). At the end there are fragments of unfinished tales, and some of his earlier work which make for an interesting read. If you don't read this book, pick up something by Lovecraft so that you can see the true power of the written word. It's beauty and it's ability to evoke emotion.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent collection of early Lovecraft tales. Most follow his usual formula: 1. Solitary, bookish narrator recalls harrowing tale, with horrors too awful to describe. 2. Tortured prose tsunami! (everything is Stygian, Babylonian, or a walpugis, etc.) 3. Blames horrors on cults of dark-skinned cultures linked to unspeakable, ancient evil.

I admit to enjoying Lovecraft for the camp factor, which a lot of his fans don't, obviously. To each his own. He had some great ideas, but he's basically the literary Ramones. Do the same thing over and over, with minor alterations, and the same basic theme. Refuse to grow or improve or change at all. It's great fun, but naturally runs out of steam after a while.

I will say that "The Street" pretty well sums up Lovecraft's racism nicely--ah, a bucolic village by the sea, slowly growing into a town, then a city. Oh no, horrible, swarthy people from other continents arrive with evil intent and ruin everything! In fairness he was 16 or so when he wrote it, and was simply parroting the anti-communist fervor of his era, but still, it's not hard to see how he gets a (well deserved) bad rap, given this portrayal of immigrants.

Still, a couple of the stories are fairly creepy, and if you enjoy reading this stuff just for the period details or the "feel" of it, or you get a kick out of the "our entire world is a thinly veiled lie" thing, or wonder what a Lovecraft story told from Harry Houdini's point of view would be like, this will do. There's also a sci-fi horror story ("In the Walls of Eryx") that's actually pretty interesting and engaging.

I should also note that I appreciate the way Lovecraft (like Henry Miller) sends me scurrying constantly to the dictionary. Remember when people thought learning difficult words was a good thing? Lovecraft doesn't always use obscure or underused words in ways that are engaging or helpful the way Miller does, but at least he uses them.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories, this is my first contact with Lovecraft's writing (he is rather popular amongst my students). These stories always took inventive, unexpected turns right before I was starting to get bored. That was quite impressive.

My favorite one was "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", a horror story set inside the claustrophobic environment of a dark Ancient Egyptian tomb, meters below ground, with a tied up protagonist. Loved it! [I need a horror movie based on that.]

However, Lovecraft's depiction of immigrants and people of colour was just detestable and it took me away from the stories many times. Very shallow and racist, unfortunately. I know this is turn-of-the-century, early 1900s literature but that kept indicating to me a lack of understanding of how people tick, how complex we are, which lies in the very heart of great literature.

I'll try his most famous stories at some point, such as "Call of Cthulhu". Hopefully no racist plotlines there.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Tomb - 5 Stars
The Festival - 3.5 Stars
Imprisoned with the Other Pharaohs - 4 Stars
He 4.25 Stars
The Horror at Red Hook - 4 Stars
The Strange High House in the Mist - 5 Stars
In the Walls of Eryx - 4.25 Stars
The Evil Clergyman - 3.5 Stars

Early Tales
The Beast in the Cave - 4 Stars
The Alchemist - 4 Stars
Poetry and the Gods - 2 Stars
The Street - 4 Stars
The Transition of Juan Romero - 4.25 Stars

Fragments
Azathoth - 3.5 Stars
The Decendant - 3 Stars
The Book - 4 Stars
The Thing in the Moonlight - 3.5 Stars

[Holger Haase · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of some of Lovecraft's lesser known stories, collaborations (one with Houdini), some early pieces and fragments.

They all display the typical Lovecraft style: very verbose and descriptive yet with very little actual dialogue or typical "action". It's a very moody kind of horror that you either love or hate. What can I say? I love it.

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tomb is one of his shortest stories and makes for a great introduction to the neophyte Lovecraft reader. Doesn't get into the mythos at all really, but is a good example of his style.

[Mark Hartzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most compilations of short stories, some are better than others. A few are outright stinkers. The earlier tales are frequently overwritten, and 'The Tomb' itself is only meh. But the outright racist stuff is simply unacceptable, even for the time. Really no Cthulhu stories here. One of Lovecraft's lesser efforts.

[Cwl · Rating 3 out of 5]

More interesting than satisfying. "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", which was ghostwritten for Houdini(!), feels like a boys' adventure tale and only descends into a Lovecraftian abyss near the end. "He" and "The Horror of Red Hook" presumably date from Lovecraft's excellent New York adventure and are full of disdain for the city and its immigrant populations, especially "Red Hook", which reads like a Klanthulu tale in spots ("squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes...who could never mean aught to a blue-eyed man of the old folk"). So it's great that "In the Walls of Eryx" is included here, if only for purposes of contrast. One of Lovecraft's later works, it's notable because it's much more straight sci-fi than cosmic horror, but also because it exhibits signs of Lovecraft fighting his way out of his prejudices. If you can find sympathy for the man-lizards of Venus, then Asians and eastern Euros should definitely get some, too. As always, written like it was written 100 years before it actually was. And it is still hilarious that the Necronomicon is invariably described as rare and unknown, yet appears in every old hovel in New England. Recommended for completists, beginners should begin with one of the classic anthologies.

[Matt Skeels · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right direction and hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant's pervasive influence. Gradually the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience could have consumed little more than a half-hour."

One of the earliest reports of the common "420" cannabis culture codeword. And this is long before the earliest noted use from the 1970's! The dating of this Lovecraft story is 1939!

Lovecraft's hallucinatory experience of the main character derives from a mirage plant and its influence. Dancing lights, spinning, spectral scenery, are all descriptions used to describe this 420 mirage-plant.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

quote:

"One can trace the relics of this former happiness in the trim shapes of the buildings, the occasional graceful churches, and the evidences of original art and background in bits of detail here and there - a worn flight of steps, a wormy pair of decorative columns of pilasters, or a fragment of once green space with bent and rusted iron railing"
- Horror in Red Hook, 1925

[Jason Kordyban · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small collection of various works from H.P. Lovecraft. The second in this series from Del Rey that I have read as warm ups to the two massive tombs I possess of his other works, where I am sure to find some if not all of the stories from these smaller collections.

[Kenn Schubach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great and odd . . . no kidding!

[Maan Kawas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book of weird tales by Lovecraft and found it engaging and entertaining. I particularly loved "The Tomb" and "In the Walls of Eryx"!

[John Yelverton · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a pretty scary story about a man who would rather spend his time in a graveyard than anywhere else, but be warned, because it gets extremely dark as the story continues.

[Bernardo Moreira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vou comentar conto por conto, brevemente.
Li esse livro quando tinha uns 13 ou 14 anos, então reler agora (especialmente após ler Romandini falando sobre Lovecraft) foi interessante.
A tumba é um bom começo, instaura o modelo do relato incerto que instiga o mistério.
O festival é bizarríssimo, uma das explorações mais surreais da bestialogia subterrânea, antiga e alienígena de Lovecraft com doses do seu frequentemente ocultismo místico.
Aprisionado com os Faraós sempre foi um dos meus contos favoritos (se não o favorito) do livro. Houdini preso nos canais subterrâneos da pirâmide e testemunhando o sinistro ritual das criaturas híbridas é incrível, mas o que mais me pega nesse conto é a descrição sufocante e claustrofóbica da absoluta escuridão e ausência de referência quando Houdini cai no abismo.
Ele acentua a associação entre os segredos do ocultismo e as "raças" que falam "línguas esquisitas" que já começa a aparecer no conto egípcio anterior. Aqui o tropo típico do ocultismo misterioso de uma casa antiga é complementado com uma "maldição" dos "peles vermelhas".
O horror em Red Hook é possivelmente o conto mais racista do livro. Pra além do mistério da seita que nem é tão interessante, Lovecraft fica o tempo todo precisando a ameaça e a estranheza aos estrangeiros, orientais, falantes de "línguas estranhas e horríveis", degenerados etc etc. O alvo aqui do racismo xenófobo são os curdos, o que é bem aleatório na real. Reclamo desse conto porque o racismo habitual de Lovecraft simplesmente toma o protagonismo do conto que nem tem uma narrativa tão interessante assim.
A estranha casa que pairava na névoa brinca dessa vez com as alturas em vez dos abismos, um mistério interessante mas com uma conclusão meio sem graça.
Entre as paredes de Eryx, apesar de imiscuir a xenofobia com um tema alienígena (o conto é passado em Vênus) e terminar com uma crítica da colonização do ponto de vista de um colonizador derrotado, é provavelmente o melhor conto do livro. Além da interessantíssima descrição do aparato de astronauta na visão de um homem do início do século XX (trajes de couro, máscaras com pastilhas para respiração e alimento), o mais brilhante do conto é a estrutura bizarra de um labirinto invisível e indestrutível. Caralho, que claustrofóbica essa narrativa. Recomendo demais.
O clérigo diabólico é curto e meio underwhelming, só o ocultismo misterioso de sempre.
A fera na caverna tem uma narrativa interessante de um labirinto escuro e uma conclusão curiosa.
O alquimista é bem envolvente, uma história louquíssima de vinganças geracionais.
Poesia e deuses é bem ruim. Sei lá, só bem ruim mesmo. Lovecraft quis homenagear seus autores favoritos da literatura e pareceu uma fanfic boba de Percy Jackson.
A rua é bizarramente reacionária. Literalmente uma narrativa de declínio do Ocidente, com direito ao mesmo tipo de racismo de O horror em Red Hook sobre os estrangeiros morenos que falam línguas estranhas nos subúrbios, louvações da bandeira confederada e uma conclusão que é literalmente o esmagamento de uma "conspiração terrorista" dessas massas de "raças estranhas" pelo exército.
A transição de Juan Romero nem fede nem cheira. Curioso como Lovecraft consegue ser orientalista a ponto de conflagrar mexicanos astecas e indianos. Nem pra meter um modo de produção asiático pra pelo menos ter o aval da história universal.
Os quatro fragmentos finais são literalmente pedaços de sonhos do Lovecraft que não trazem muito de novo. Ocultismo, mistério, livros de magia e reacionarismo à la Declínio do Ocidente. É meio que isso só.

Resumo: alguns contos valem muito à pena, o resto onde Lovecraft ou é só brutalmente racista ou repetitivo nos seus temas valem ser pulados (ou lidos pra ter noção de certas bizarrices).

[Christina B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 rounded down
•
This was my first attempt at Lovecraft and much more of a struggle than I anticipated. I did not expect his personal racism and xenophobia to be so blatant in his stories but it certainly was, and seemingly with no purpose in relation to the stories. It was disconcerting to say the least.
•
I also found much of the writing to be monotonous and boring, with a huge overuse of several words: eldritch, aperture, and phosphorescent, just to name a few. For the most part, the stories were many unnecessary words, repeated around a rather small and uninteresting plot-namely, there’s something evil in the middle of the earth and some kind of ‘foreigners’ are going to find it and doom mankind-blah, blah, blah.
•
The Strange House in the Mist had a bit of a twist on the tired, old standard and I liked the writing style better than the previous stories, but it still fell short of being good. In the Walls of Eryx was a pleasant surprise in the middle of the book and easily my favorite story. There were a couple others that fell into the 3-3.5 star range, but sadly most of the book just felt like a chore to get through.
•
I know these aren’t Lovecraft’s most well known works, so at some point I will read his more popular stories but I wouldn’t recommend these to anyone except a Lovecraft completist.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

H.P. Lovecraft has always evoked a wide range of responses from his readers. That may be less apparent with The Tomb and Other Tales, a collection of minor stories, odds and ends, and obscurities put together by Lovecraft’s literary executor August Derleth. Having said that, fans who read this might still feel a range of conflicting emotions.

This short paperback anthology is comprised of three sections. The first is a collection of completed short stories that were published in pulp magazines. Most are typical, maybe even generic, Lovecraft tales. Many of them are actually algorithmically the same story written with different details. Stories like “The Tomb”, “He”, and “The Strange High House In the Mist” all involve an nondescript narrator who goes in search of some form of ancient and forbidden knowledge, ends up in a place with some creepy people who perform some ceremonial magic, and reveal to him hallucinatory terrors of another, parallel world full of weird creatures with bad intentions. “Imprisoned With the Pharaohs” also follows this template but has the unique distinction of having been ghostwritten for Harry Houdini, one of the few readers who had an admiration for Lovecraft during his lifetime. It also exemplifies the Egyptomania and Art Nouveau styles of its day. It is, however, mediocre writing, even when considering pulp standards.

The best piece in the first section, “The Horror of Red Hook”, is, unfortunately, also the most racist. A policeman is sent to investigate some strange happenings in a sordid section of New York City. He encounters a scholar of the occult named Robert Suydam who appears to be the leader of a cult. Using some unflattering and xenophobic descriptions, it is explained that the cult is made up of Kurdish Yezidis involved in human trafficking, bootlegging, and child sacrifice. Like most of the stories in this collection, the investigation leads to underground tunnels and the horrific sites of otherworldly creatures entering our dimension. Lovecraft describes the Kurdish immigrants in distinctly negative terms; by doing so he meant to shock and horrify his audience, which was miniscule during his lifetime by the way, but those racist details, as offensive as they are, make stories like this look more dated than scary. Unpacking the racism in Lovecraft’s writing can lead you down a rabbit hole that is more nuanced and complex than one may care to admit at first.

“The Walls of Eryx” is another one of the better stories. An astronaut explorer bushwhacks through the jungles of Venus in search of crystals that work as potent sources of energy on Earth. The crystals are worshiped by big lizard men who succeed in trapping him inside an invisible labyrinth made of a glassy, unbreakable material unknown to the people of Earth. Critics of Lovecraft may point out that Venus resembles a tropical colony that gets invaded by white people who come to take resources from the non-white inhabitants represented by the lizard men. The story has a twist though since the astronaut can not escape from the trap, and while admitting defeat, confesses that the lizard men may be of equal intelligence to people from Earth after all. He realizes that they ultimately have no right to come and steal the crystals from Venus and should, in the future, try to learn from the lizard men rather than conquering them. H.P. Lovecraft was undoubtedly racist but at least this story shows that he may have been open to alternate ways of thinking about other kinds of people if he had lived longer.

The second section of this paperback has some of his earliest writings. They are all works of juvenilia and read exactly like what they are: the kind of stories you might find in a high school creative writing class. They are full of the types of shortcomings you would expect. They do, however, show how Lovecraft was rooted in the ideals of romanticism and neo-paganism. Therefore, they may be of interest to those who want to understand what literary strands led up to his better and more developed works.

Surprisingly, the most interesting stories appear in the third section which contains four fragments of stories Lovecraft started and never completed. “Azathoth” is a fast-paced swirling psychedelic phantasmagoria that means little but hits you like an acid rock song from the 1960s. “The Descendant” is about a man who went crazy from studying The Necronomicon and putting its theories into practice. “The Book” continues on with a similar theme.

H.P. Lovecraft is more or less a cult writer. The politically correct abhor him but shouldn’t they? He intended to horrify and scare his audience so at least at that level he succeeded. Snooty literary snobs condemn him for his overly long sentences, tortured grammar, and unnecessarily descriptive paragraphs about things that do not need to be described. But he did express a coherent vision of the interactions between parallel universes that is imaginative and fun to read at times. A lot of writers do that though; what makes Lovecraft unique is that he opens a window into a literary world that can be analyzed endlessly as one doorway into the tunnels of his mind lead to more and mor doorways in endless succession. It goes even deeper when you try to square Lovecraft the man with the things he wrote, only to find an odd assortment of contradictions, curiosities, and coincidences. His ideas fit snugly with psychoanalysis and read like a plunge into the human id. The theme of a dark, evil, terrifying, and violent reality that underlies our ordinary lives anticipates the works of David Lynch who took on a similar framework sixty years later. The Tomb and Other Tales will probably only appeal to diehard and fanatical fans but for those people it can provide an extra touch of insight into this notoriously fascinating author.

https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/

[Sasha Alessandro Volpi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una versione acerba, ma illuminante di un Lovecraft interessato a scandagliare l'animo umano

[George N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty solid selection of short stories.

[Jean-Pierre Vidrine · Rating 3 out of 5]

With Lovecraft, it's always hit and miss. This collection has just enough "hit" to avoid a dismal rating, but only just so. When the stories in this collection are not good, they are entirely forgettable. The caveat that most people cringe at about Lovecraft is his sometimes blatant racism. In other collections of his work I'd read, the attitudes were not too prominent, but never entirely absent. In some of these tales the prejudice practically takes center stage.
"The Street" in particular is so xenophobic it virtually hurts. "In the Walls of Eryx," an unexpected interplanetary adventure, has a narrator that echos much the same sentiment. Curiously, though, he recants his attitude as the story progresses. I'm not sure what this story says about Lovecraft himself. Was he turning over a new leaf? Simply writing for a character?
The most forgettable stories read more like fragments rather than fully realized works. Oddly enough, it's the collection of fragments at the end of the book that is the most enjoyable. Purportedly dreams of the author written down in haste but never expanded upon, I find it telling that most of them are about escaping the trappings of the mundane world.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

"doom, gloom, and cosmic terror from the deep" is an acquired taste for those who aren't strict admirers of all of his work, completists, as they say... i read Lovecraft early in my horror days and found it so unbelievably different and eerily unsettling, likely the goal of the tales it would seem... the Cthulhu mythos is fascinating and bizarrely otherworldly, and the best i can describe the feeling when reading quality works of this "genre" is that of a ghastly bass rumbling that is just on the outer edges of hearing, o maybe someone consistently dinging your humerus while slowly slicing through your achilles tendons with a violin bow... being essentially unsure of what strangeness the work portends, it generates a feeling of unease and a slowly encroaching physical awfulness... Lovecraft was a racist bastard, a sort of Anglo-Saxon supremacist, and that never helps one's legacy... his work is seminal in the horror genre, nonetheless... i won't apologize for liking his tales, though i understand why some refuse to read him at all...

[Chris Kleis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice collection of stories by Lovecarft, offering alternative aspects of horror, alongside the classic conception of the Ancient Ones.

But the real masterpiece here is "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", a short story -which doesn't share many bonds with the horror genre- based on a concept far beyond its own time, and any time really. Superb and unrivaled...

Since the review is about all stories in the collection, I'd rate each one of them as follows:

The Tomb..........................3/5
Dagon.............................3/5
The Transition of Juan Romero.....2/5
Beyond the Wall of Sleep..........5/5
The Statement of Randolph Carter..3/5
The Nameless City.................4/5
Herbert West: Reanimator..........3/5
Hypnos............................4/5
He................................3/5