Home » Posts tagged "H. P. Lovecraft"

Graphic Novel Review: Kadath, or the Dream Quest of Randolph Carter by Charles Cutting

0

Kadath, or the Dream Quest of Randolph Carter by Charles Cutting

Sloth Comics, 2015

ISBN-13: 9781908830074

Available: Paperback ( Amazon.com )

 

Kadath, or the Dream Quest of Randolph Carter, is based on H. P. Lovecraft’s 1943 novella, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Cutting does not offer a straightforward retelling in his Kadath, but rather a more entertaining and colourful version.

 

Randolph Carter dreams of a mysterious sunset city on three different occasions. His obsession with this perfect city becomes dangerous as he ventures on a quest within the dream world to find the elusive place called Kadath. The further he goes, the closer he gets to a terrible secret. Carter faces Zoogs, the cats of Ulthar, and more in his journey. The main character is also, in short, a jerk and wholy unreliable as a narrator. Cutting also includes a Kadath gallery and humorous two-page comic titled “Did Lovecraft Die a Virgin?” at the end of this volume. 

 

The artwork in this graphic novel is notable in its detail and vibrant colours. There are times where Cutting’s artwork makes me think of Noel Fielding’s strange and psychedelic art pieces and character designs, which seems right at home in a dreamscape. This is an entertaining and well-illustrated graphic novel. I would encourage readers interested in retellings of Lovecraft to seek this out.  Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Haunted Travels: Essex County, Massachusetts: Lovecraft Country

 

topographical map of essex county massachusetts by Henry Francis WallingIf you’re visiting Salem already, you can take your haunted travels further; it is a county seat for Essex County, Massachusetts, frequently referred to as “Lovecraft country” (not to be mistaken with the novel by Matt Ruff or the HBO show).  While not all of his tales were set here, many of horror master H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are set in the area, and while the locations and geography have been fictionalized and altered,  Marblehead, Salem, Gloucester, and Newburyport in particular have been suggested as inspirations for the towns of Kingsport, Arkham (home of Miskatonic University), Innsmouth, and Dunwich (although not necessarily in that order). In an article for The Toast, Rebecca Turkewitz writes:

 

 

Although Lovecraft’s towns and rivers have invented names and the geography is slightly altered, Lovecraft is adamant about the importance of his rural New England locations. He nestled his fictional towns, such as Arkham and Dunwich, in between real places, such as Newburyport and Plum Island. In his story “The Picture in the House,” Lovecraft describes the ghastly spell of the “ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England,” and the “elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and ignorance” which skulk there.

 

That Lovecraft mentions nonfictional places and place names in the same stories gives the reader a sense that it all could be real, and yet the fact that his imagined places are not quite analogues contributes to his creation of an uncanny atmosphere for the stories. Trying to identify exactly where they are can be difficult, as Lovecraft locatescover for The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Stories Arkham in different places in his stories. Luckily, there are fans of Lovecraft who have done the work of mapping out the inspirations and possible locations of his tales. Donovan Loucks of the H.P. Lovecraft Archive has researched Massachusetts sites tied into Lovecraft’s stories: while his short tour of Lovecraftian Massachusetts sites  includes Boston and Cambridge, most are in Essex County.

 

1920s Essex County and 2020s Essex County are very different places, as you can see in this Lovecraft lover’s 1997 journey, but bring your copy of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and imagine the geography and architecture of Essex County through a glass darkly.

 

 

Interested in Lovecraft-inspired fiction? Here’s a list of some relatively recent books that give his fiction a twist.

Book Review: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

cover art for The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

Bookshop.org  |  Project GutenbergAmazon.com )

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

ISBN-13 : 978-1081920890

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, Project Gutenberg

 

Having just finished T. Kingfisher’s book The Hollow Places, I discovered in the afterword that she had been inspired by a novella by Algernon Blackwood titled The Willows, which was much admired by H.P. Lovecraft as an example of horror and weird fiction. The story follows the narrator and his traveling companion (referred to throughout as “the Swede”) as they journey down the Danube River, which is almost a character in the story. Having left the town of Pressburg during a rising tide, with the threat of a storm on the way, they are washed out of the main channel of the river and into a wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp covered with willow bushes, a “separate little kingdom of wonder and magic… with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers.”

With the waters still rising and the winds blowing the two find an island large enough to camp on that they are sure they will not be washed away. The rising water, the shouting wind, the crumbling islands, and the masses of willows all together create a sense of unease and terror in the narrator, which he tries to dismiss by focusing on practical matters. He and his companion avoid speaking about their current situation, even when all they have to occupy themselves with is conversation. Alone, collecting driftwood for the fire, the narrator describes the willows as “utterly alien,” a vast army of “innumberable silver spears”. Although he suspects his companion shares his feelings of disquiet, the two men don’t speak about their unease. After their first night on the island, the narrator sees that the islands, covered in willows, have moved closer to their own, which is washing away. His companion has discovered that they cannot leave right away, though, because one of their steering paddles is missing, the second has been filed so it will break on usage, and there is now a hole in the bottom of their canoe, and believes the damage was done to make them victims of a sacrifice. The narrator, not wanting corroboration for his feelings of unease and fear, attempts to come up with logical explanations, but neither of the two can really believe them. Both men are terrified of their upcoming fate, but his companion advises him that it’s best to neither talk nor think of the willows who may be searching them out and hope that, in their insignificance, the creatures of the “beyond region” they have strayed into, will fail to find them.

A camping trip with a friend doesn’t sound like it would be ominous and terrifying, but Blackwood’s vivid descriptions of the natural world and the narrator’s disintegrating state of mind turns what seems at first like a river inlet filled with willow bushes that might be a good place to stay overnight, into an unnatural, dread-inducing enviroment. It’s creepy in the “I can’t believe these characters slept at all on the island” kind of way. You will never look at willows without seeing them as sinister again.

Blackwood’s descriptions of the willows as an “unearthly region” where the beings “have nothing to do with mankind” marks this story as an early work of weird fiction, and you can clearly see the influence on Lovecraft’s work. It’s easy to see why Blackwood is considered a master of the genre. Highly recommended.

Note: I read the Project Gutenberg edition of this novella, not the one pictured above.