H.P. Lovecraft

Joseph Payne Brennan offers a sharp, unusually candid appraisal of H. P. Lovecraft, admiring his imagination while questioning the excesses that can weaken his fiction. He finds Lovecraft's prose often verbose and repetitive, especially in the Cthulhu Mythos tales, where cosmic scale can crowd out suspense, realism, and economy. Yet Brennan also argues that the mythos' early power should not be mistaken for Lovecraft's whole achievement, and that later devotion has sometimes inflated its importance. He points instead to the stories that endure most strongly: "The Music of Erich Zann," "The Rats in the Walls," "The Outsider," "Pickman's Model," and "The Hound." In these tighter, pre-mythos works, Brennan sees Lovecraft at his best, achieving a Poe-like unity of effect through atmosphere, compression, and memorable climaxes. He extends that praise to the sonnets of Fungi from Yuggoth, the essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, and even Lovecraft's letters, which he believes reveal wit, learning, and style. Brennan's verdict is measured but admiring: Lovecraft may not equal Poe or Bierce, but his finest work will remain vital to horror literature. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.