His
unhappiness about living in New York City is reflected in some of the stories
that he wrote in these years. That he
did not like the city is very evident in two of his stories which take place
there: The Horror at Red Hook (1927), and He (1926). The Horror at Red Hook is essentially a
long, elaborate metaphor about urban corruption and decay—brought about by
recent immigrants to the city—and was discussed in a previous post. The story called He is altogether different.
It is much more personal, with strong biographical elements.
He is unusual among
Lovecraft’s fiction in that it is primarily a ghost story. It also contains time travel and just a slight
touch of vampirism. These otherwise disparate
elements hold together well, and the author shows off his mastery of setting to
create a mood of uneasiness and dread. The
story includes uniquely Lovecraftian themes:
an older man serves as a guide who initiates the narrator into unknown mysteries,
history and the past are worshipped, and the unfamiliar and the new are to be
feared.
As
the story begins, the narrator introduces himself as an unsuccessful and frustrated
poet in New York City. Although he is initially
excited and hopeful, he soon comes to see the city as “dead, its sprawling body
imperfectly embalmed and infested…” He
takes to wandering at night, avoiding the crowds and noise, to explore the more
historic sections of the city. He is
noticed—there is some creepiness here—by an otherworldly old man who offers to
give him a tour of some really old districts. In fact, he leads the narrator by a
circuitous route back in time, to his ancestral mansion in Greenwich Village. Lovecraft skillfully uses architectural
details to seamlessly shift from the present to the past. The ancient house is at the top of a hill,
and involves an ascent.
In
the library of the mansion, the old man reveals the history of his family, who
built the house on this place because of the supernatural influences present
there. The Native Americans who lived in
the area knew how to manipulate these strange forces, and in exchange for rum—which
eventually led to their deaths—revealed the secret to the ancestor. The old man also goes on to expound a
metaphysical belief that has been key to his family’s long survival: that the human will has a capacity to
dominate not only the self and others, but can even have an effect over matter
and natural forces. This idea also
underpins Lovecraft’s story Cool Air,
which appeared several years later. Cool Air
and He have similar endings in some
respects, because of this notion of the power of the will.
The
old man draws the narrator to the window where he is able to produce visions of
the city at various times in history.
First, the primordial wilderness is shown. Then there is a bucolic view of Greenwich
Village before it was overtaken by New York City. The narrator, a version of Lovecraft himself,
clearly finds these two scenes agreeable.
The narrator then asks if the old man can also see into the future. And then, horror of horrors, the city of the
future is conjured. It is a pandemonium,
overrun by “yellow squint eyed people” who are banging on drums and blowing on
horns. He screams and even the
ghoul-vampire is overwhelmed by the sight. (Diversity training is still 40 or more years in the future).
The
narrator’s screams and the old man’s agitation summon from below the vengeful
spirits of the Native Americans who had been poisoned so long ago. As in The
Alchemist, one of the author’s earlier stories, the strange old man
actually is the ancestor who is the
origin of the horror. The angry spirits
are amalgamated into a very Lovecraftian ghost—amorphous, dark and fluid, with
multiple eyes. As the old man decays and
blackens before the narrator’s eyes, the ghost falls upon what is left of him—flows over him would be more accurate—and
carries his remains back down the stairs.
The narrator narrowly escapes the rapidly deteriorating building, which
crumbles as the powerful will that sustained it declines along with its mortal
remains. There is equivalence between
the old man and the house. They are in a
sense the same entity. A very similar dissolution
is found at the end of Cool Air.
The
narrator finds himself in another part of the city, dazed, bloodied and with
broken bones. He is soon on his way back
to “the pure New England lanes up which fragrant sea-winds sweep at evening.” The sadness is palpable, as it is in The Silver Key, which he published
several years later. Whereas a return to
the past is successful in the latter tale, so full of wistfulness, nostalgia,
and hope, in He the return is injurious
and almost fatal. New York City, and the
demands of adulthood, have literally broken him.
Though
not as famous as stories in his ‘Cthulhu Mythos’, He is interesting because of its biographical comment on a
difficult time in Lovecraft’s life, and as a snapshot of one man’s view of city
life in the early twentieth century. This
story has been given interesting graphic treatment in volume II of The Lovecraft Anthology (SelfMadeHero).
Hi!
ReplyDeleteLet me introduce myself...
My name is Doug Draa
I am the new contributing editor over at Weird Tales Magazine which was re-launched earlier this year. And I wish to inform you that the 2nd issue since the re-launch has been released. The publisher (film maker and director) John Harlacher and editor in chief Marvin Kaye (The playwright, author and anthologist) have made an attempt to take the magazine back to its roots. Each new issue has a mixture of Themed and non-themed fiction.
The first re-launch issue (#360) had HPL's "Old Ones" as it theme with original fiction by Brian Lumley, Michael Shea and Darrell Schweitzer among others.
The newest issue has "Fairy Tales" as it's them with fiction by Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) and Tanith Lee and non-fiction by Darrell Schweitzer. So you can see that they are going all out to bring in name writers.
Here's the link to their announcement...
http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/2013/07/08/weird-tales-361-table-of-contents-cover-art/
This is the magazine that gave us such greats as Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith and many others.
I'd like to point out that for the time being each issue will be a mixture of themed and non-themed content. And even though we re-instated the classic WTs logo, the artists will be having some fun with it by slightly altering it to fit the cover and theme, this issues "smokey logo" for example.
Can I send you Reviewer copies of Issues 360 and 361 as .pdf files.
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions!
Thanks and take care.
Doug Draa
Contributing Editor, Weird Tales Magazine
Please do! I'm a past subscriber and would love to see what's new.
ReplyDelete