The Necronomicon

Whenever I think of the Necronomicon I think of Evil Dead, more specifically Evil Dead: The Musical. However, the Book of the Dead, is not just related to that franchise. The horror genre seems to be full of necronomicons. And one such mythos is Lovecraft.

I got a copy of The Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft as part of a Secret Santa exchange the blog and a number of our friends did earlier in December. It's a fairly large book, 37 stories of varying length. I've been reading it on and off since then.

I've never read Lovecraft before. I am, as most nerds are, aware of Cthulhu mythos. Cthulhu love is pretty hard to miss among the nerds. Enough that I took the effort to wikipedia it a few years back to understand. And I had the fortune to read "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman which is a strange, wonderful mix between Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraftian mythology in a collection of his short fiction. (Here is a link to the story on Gaiman's website. I encourage everyone to read it. http://www.neilgaiman.com/mediafiles/exclusive/shortstories/emerald.pdf ) But I have never actually read anything by the man himself.

So now I have. I have to say it's pulp at its finest. Nothing quite says early 20th century popular fiction like obvious racism and overuse of the word degenerate. His stories are filled with discussion of decadent degeneracy and perversion directly leading to encounters with the maddening, disgusting grotesqueness of evil. If there is a lesson to be learned, it is stay home and surround yourself with happy, normal people who like happy, normal things. Never befriend medical students obsessed with reanimation or try to find what happened to a reclusive family in the Catskills Mountains. Be wary of crazy old people and relics of forgotten ages.

Lovecraft uses mystery to add to his horror. He weaves incomplete accounts by unknown narrators' descent into insanity. We rarely know their names but we always know they are on the brink of insanity-driven suicide. They take their time explaining how they destroyed themselves but the reader is left often with questions about what exactly they faced, even at the end. The horror they witness is unmentionable and indescribable, leaving their terror to the mind of the reader. The terror of the unknown and unexplained is the base of his stories. His descriptions use 10 dollar words that were no doubt common among writings at the time. Yet, they are bit dense to get through if you're not paying close enough attention. Which adds a bit to the reminder than you're not reading something published recently.

I have to say I've been enjoying this. Despite my usual dislike for horror, this isn't that scary. It's not that gory either, at least not the kind of gore I'm used to. I imagine my exposure to modern horror dulls the terror of Lovecraft that terrified his original readers. Most of the stories are very short, which makes picking up and leaving off pretty easy. I am rather fond of short fiction anyway, since school reading and Internet addiction has shot my attention span. And the social historian in me is enjoying all the little unintended insights into Lovecraft's view of his own world and time. I say, all in all, it was a good choice of gift for me.

Now I will have a better idea of what's happening when we play Lovecraft-based Arkham Horror next time.