Weird Fiction discussion

For April's Lovecraft read we are enjoying "The Temple," originally written in 1920, but not published until it found a home in Weird Tales #24, the September 1925 issue. This short story is not considered by most to be one of Lovecraft's better ones. However, as in the first story we read, "Dagon," "The Temple" is a nautical story with a World War I background. The theme of submerged cities with non-human worshipers recurs in Lovecraft's later works, most notably "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," both of which are important masterpieces we will be reading later.

One of many possible places to read the text online includes the following: https://hplovecraft.com/writings/text.... This story is slightly longer than the others we have read so far. It came to eleven pages in print.

I must confess to not thinking highly of this story. It is told in first person narrative and is the account of a German officer on a U-boat regarding sinking American liners, encountering a supernatural talisman, and the subsequent demise of the U-boat personnel, to a large extent at the unreliable narrator's hands.

There is a certain lack of drama because the narrator never actually comes into conflict with anyone. He proves to be a German nationalist racist, not a likable character at all, so caring about his ultimate fate also becomes all but impossible for a reader.

Also not present is any real sophistication of writing style that comes later to separate Lovecraft's style from that of his contemporaries. I admit, I found myself skimming some of this story. Hope we have better luck with next month's (May's) story.

The narrator was nasty. He let the sailors leave the Victory in lifeboats, so that he could film the sinking, and then sank the lifeboats. I'm sure he got what he deserved in the temple.
He, a Prussian, mocked the other Germans who weren't Prussian, but he was the one who didn't want to get rid of the medallion.

This one was a strange one to have read not that long after the confirmed implosion of a subversive vehicle near the Titanic wreck.

After imagining the fates of five modern explorers over the last few days, I would think a modern writer would probably deal more with the claustrophobia and fear of being trapped and then include the supernatural elements as possibly real or not but in no way as frightening as being isolated and alone at that depth.

I am interested that neither of you liked the protagonist. I feel that Lovecraft does? I know he was an Anglophile and a lot of the British Aristocracy would have favoured the German aristocracy at the time despite the Great War. Lovecraft also commented quite favourably about the Hun in Dagon. So a possibility? Are the Prussian's one of the few races he favoured? OR are we supposed to think that the protagonist is arrogant?

I'd say Lovecraft was pretty proud of our protagonist, but it works for modern readers anyway as an arrogant half-likeable and experemental-ish character, I find. This is one of my favourite Lovecrafts- why so underrated? This was actually scared me a bit! And the DOLPHINS! the dolphins were very effective.