******Beginning of Part Five******

Now we get to the dank beef of Lovecraft’s body of work. The Novellas! And what better month to continue our dive into HPL then one so lovingly called “March Madness”.

I chose to highlight only four because more than half this list could be made up of mostly novellas he did. I enjoyed all of his novellas and would recommend them all. But I had to limit the selection for my own sanity’s sake. And there are only a few novellas HPL wrote, he mostly wrote short stories. And he was a poet apparently, he was super into poetry. But we’ll tackle that behemoth another day.

Six short stories and four novellas felt right to recommend. And with the novellas, I will be giving my sincere and snarky commentary as evenly as possible. And I will be taking breaks between groups of chapters too. One of my chosen novella’s audiobook alone is over four hours long. Thank you again to the HP Lovecraft Historical Society for these awesome audiobooks. They have made this article not so a herculean task.

This is going to be a wild ride into the eldritch mind of one Hit-Points LC.

So, limiting my selections to four novellas, which ones did I choose? Well, to start, let's take a look at . . .

4# The Dunwich Horror

The pursuit of secret knowledge and dark power is often shown in horror tales as a foolish, self-destructive quest, leading the seeker to face death and tragedy. And sometimes even after the seeker is gone, the evil remains. As if they unleash evil onto the world.

This story, from what I know of HPL, feels the most intimate about his upbring and love for literature. It's about a young man from an isolated family who was homeschooled with access to a large family library. Which is a parallel to Lovecraft’s own upbringing. And looking up the various influences of HPL’s favorite works, this story is a grab-bag of some of his favorite concepts and horrific imagery.

Also, this story heavily connects to other Cthulhuian Mythos that HPL had established. Whether or not this world building was intentional on his part, I do not know. Maybe he just liked the idea of the same settings and monsters recurring in various stories. It is a lot of fun and rewarding to connect elements from one story to another.

Wow, I have not even listened to the audiobook and I have not listened/read this story in a while. And I’m super excited because this one sticks with you. Like an alien lineage to some Primordial Outer God that haunts you, tempts you, ravages you, and mutates you into the ideal demigod! Embrace your eldritch heritage and become the avatar of your father, Yog-Sothoth!! MAAH-Ha-Ha-Ha-HAAA!!!

Anyway, let's dig into the Dunwich Horror!

Opening with a quote by Charles Lamb, who is . . . huh. An essayist, poet, and he was active during colonial america times that was HPL’s favorite time. Makes sense, now, chapter one . . .

I — Whippoorwills are psychopomps, apparently. A whippoorwill is a bird with an interesting call. It’s not unpleasant but if you're not used to it, it would probably drive you a bit loopy. And a psychopomps is a spiritual guide to the afterlife. All this is relevant, I think, later on.

So this is a strong opening, with plenty of description of setting and set up by regaling local folklore. And the area is, apparently, so isolated that the local populus has degraded. HPL is both fascinated and horrified by rural mountain folk. This is not the first or last time he eloquently writes about country residents to such length that simply saying “bumpkin” would be efficient.

A strong opening. I especially like the mention of a preacher who called out the evils of the area only to vanish the next day. It sets up that no one is safe in this place from the local horrors.

II — we get into the meat and potatoes of this tale, the Whateley family. Now, HPL does not seem to like albinos but I think albinos are cool. At least, his description of Lavinia Whateley, an albino woman, is not kind. But then again he is setting up a family of witchcraft (in the 1910s). Witches have not been looked upon kindly during any time in history. Sadly.

And Lavinia’s son, Wilbur Whateley is the focus of this tale. And he is described as being both intelligent and gruesome to look at. I’ve always liked how blunt HPL is about certain aspects of a character. They are effective in painting interesting and unique pictures of characters.

Speaking of painting pictures, doing Google Image searches of Lavinia gives mostly results of an anime girl who I think the internet just invented. And searches of Wilbur produce images of spoilers.

Oh and Yog-Sothoth is mentioned here, which I believe is the first story this famous HPL deity is mentioned. Doing a search, I came to find out it was “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” first mention of the god but here in this tale, Yog-Sothoth is identified as a deity.

Anyway, I’m getting distracted by Google searches, let's continue . . .

III — “Olfactory immaculateness” is a phrase I want to use in casual conversation someday. So, this chapter is all about the Whateleys being up to something. And drawing some unwanted attention. And Wilbur is a growing boy, so much so that he might not be normal.

IV — “Pandaemoniac cachinnation” OMG, I love HPL’s vocab. It’s both admirable and hilarious sometimes. Oh, and this story is getting really good now. It’s hard to say anymore without spoiling it. Just going to say that the whippoorwills come up again and you decide what their presence means for the tale . . .

V — Oh yes, we get a Necronomicon appearance in this story. And we visited Miskatonic University. This story is really an all star appearance of various Cthulhuian mythos. And if only Wilbur was born a century later, he could have just looked up all he needed on the internet. I’m sure some cray-cray fool would post the original Necronomicon online just to see what happens.

VI — Wilbur tried some things and it didn’t work out. I don’t think he’s going to be okay, guys. This chapter highlights something common in HPL stories about cosmic horror. “This thing is indescribable, let me describe it now.” Yeah, I think HPL likes to describe monsters which is a fun and challenging practice. Monsters that exist outside our own understanding and reality can only be detailed vaguely with hints and mild associations with our normal sensory organs.

I love this kind of attempt at characterizing the indescribable. It leaves enough to picture things. But also leaves enough out to fill in the holes. Fill in the gaps with your own grotesque fears and nightmares.

VII — Oh yeah, now HPL is getting to the good stuff. You can tell with how everything is executed that he really wanted to get to the titular Dunwich Horror. And He likes to write dialogue with accents, I think it's southern displayed here. The build up and details of the horror that stalks Dunwich just grows and grows and is so enthralling that I might stop describing the chapters here. We shall see . . .

VIII — “Vigintillions” is a real word, to my surprise. Where did HPL find all these words? An old and leather bound dictionary that is a window into the unknown, likely.

Oh, if anything would give people interested in the Call of Cthulhu RPG an idea of how one plays in the game, this chapter is a good example. I feel bad for Armitage, all that knowledge and horror in such a short amount of time.

IX — A mob cannot hunt what it cannot see . . . can it? I mean, a mob would not be dumb enough to fight an eldritch horror they cannot see, right? Right?

“The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters”

—Sir Terry Pratchett

Yeah, that sums it up. At least Armitage and the other professors are there to raise the IQ a little bit. Just a little bit 🤏

X — Not going to spoil the ending. I’m just going to say that its a strong and rarely victorious and positive end to the horror. Usually in a HPL story, there are no victories or salvation or even positive outlook.

I mentioned the Call of Cthulhu RPG by Chaosium and recalled something from the Investigator’s Guide (player’s guide). The Dunwich Horror is in the story, in full, which is awesome. I knew my comment on this story of all the HPL stories being a good reference for roleplaying was from some external force.

So, I’m wrapping this up because, apparently, I had a lot to say. Surprise, surprise, surprise to no one. This has been a fun blast so far though. I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts on the upcoming novellas. The next one, I promise, will be out of time . . . hee—hee.

Check out the HP Lovecraft Historical Society site for the audiobooks I listen to when making this article:

https://www.hplhs.org/

******End of Part Five******