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Saturday, December 23, 2006
The Statement of Randolph Carter by H.P Lovecraft
Okay, I really don't get this one. Two men went to a graveyard and opened a crypt; one went down while the other stayed on the surface. They kept in touch by telephone [probably a novel idea at the time]. Before long the one underground started yelling at his friend to run away. The friend didn't comply; a silence fell over the telephone, eventually broken by an alien voice telling the survivor his companion was dead. End of story. The narrator remembers no more, which is deeply unsatisfying. There's no detail provided about the nature of the poor fellow's fate. And the whole thing is miserably stilted by that irritating feature of so much of Lovecraft's work, the imperfect narration from memory. Would it be so hard, just once, to tell a vivid story in real time?
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Yes, I suppose when you strip the story down to the bare bones like that, it does seem rather plain. And I'll admit that the 'starting the story after it ends' thing is in nearly all of Lovecraft's work and it gets old really fast. But I've always liked this little tale. Maybe because it's the first story in my personal collection, and I liked the atmopshere and language (the necrographous shadows dancing beneath the accursed moon). Maybe the man's fate is hinted at in the atmospheric writing.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, you mentioned wanting to read the companion piece (sort of) to this, and it is The Outsider. BTW, there's no narration from memory in that one.
Ooh, goodies. Maybe I'll make a single exception to my vow never to read Lovecraft again ;)
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