NitaKeepUp

H.P. Lovecraft has for many years been at the back of my mind as an author I need to try.  I finally bought, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, and started it a couple days ago.  Lovecraft has a very interesting writing style.  He has very little dialog (exception would include the short story, The Picture in the House, though most of that is one-sided).  Some of the short stories include a narrator relaying a story of what has happened to himself or another person.  ”I shall never forget that hideous summer sixteen years ago, when like a noxious afrite from the halls of Eblis typhoid stalked leeringly through Arkham” (p. 55) starts part II of the short story, Herbert West — Reanimator.  The stories that do not have a narrator still feel like someone is telling me the story instead of me reading the story.  Lovecraft also repeats a lot and uses words like hideous, gruesome, and perverse excessively.  I think this might annoy some readers, but I rather like it. 

I am very much enjoying myself reading these stories.  I already sleep with my eyes open and turn pictures on my wall into giant spiders.  Why not add dark disturbing dreams to that?  I am new to the whole Cthulhu mythology, and I think only one or two stories of the eight I have read so far have eluded to this god.  One of the notes in the back of the book explains the pronounciation of the word Cthulhu, which I was pronouncing very differently in my head.  Apparently humans can only attempt to pronounce this word correctly.  The closest humans can get is Khlul-hloo, with the first h silent, and the first syllable said “guttarally”.  I need practice.