Weird Stories . . . I Have Never Read "The Call of Cthulhu"

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The title isn't entirely right.  I have read "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft; but not until very recently.  Like, within the last week.  There's something really strange about not having read this story yet declaring that I enjoy reading Lovecraft.  Moreover, there's something really odd about saying that I like the so-called "weird" genre without having read the most famous story within the genre.  I chalk it up to not liking what's popular.  I avoid Oprah's book club.  I try not to read whatever happens to be on the New York Times bestseller list (or at the very least I try to read it before it hits that point.)  Maybe it's because I'm a snob and I actively disdain what everyone else enjoys on the assumption that it's kitsch, or low-brow.  That last assumption based on the assumption that the more people you stick in a room, the lower the IQ tends to be.  This of course is the opposite of the Wiki movement and much of the collaborationist tenets of the forthcoming age.  But I digress.

H.P. Lovecraft is someone whose works I have read, on-and-off, for the last decade and a half.  I have several collections of his work, but I came to them rather obliquely.  That is, I remember seeing a collection in the bookstore and feeling a little off-put by the cover art.  It was weird; it was frightening.  It was probably something I wanted to avoid. 

But then I got into Stephen King in a big way, and started hearing about this guy named Gaiman.  I started reading the Sandman comic series when it was released as a trade paperbacks, and I really enjoyed it.  So when I heard that both were heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft I figured he was someone whose work I should probably try. 

The onus of "pulp" still hovered over him, though, and I felt my snobbery rising.  I tucked the book with the weird cover under my arm and hoped no one saw what I had purchased.  I took it home, and I read a couple stories. 

And I didn't like them.

At that time I was unaware of his different periods of writing, what we'd call "seasons" if he were a painter of any renown.  But as it was, there are definite periods in Lovecraft's life that reflect both his ability and his inclinations and I picked a book which highlighted his younger years and his less-mature works.  I have the feeling that I chose that book because the cover was less-weird than the rest, but come what may.  Regardless, I was uninterested in reading further and I had the vague sense of snobbery confirmed; people who liked this guy were just unenlightened. 

So a few years went by, and I had the sense that I'd missed out on something there.  People were talking about Lovecraft in a way often reserved for Tolkien, or Lewis.  He was mentioned in circles that included Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, whose Conan series and Solomon Kane (which, unknown to me until I wrote this post, was made into a movie), I both knew and admired.  Also about this time, I heard about the Lovecraft Film Festival here in Portland and began to understand that, indeed, I had missed something. 

My own writing of this time reflects the heavy influence of weird.  I was reading a lot of Shirley Jackson for writing classes, and Stephen King in my spare time and the early 2000s were simply a strange time to be alive.  Fiction of the time reflected the tension of a nation at war, and the uncertainty of an enemy who couldn't quite be pinned down.  Weird fiction became popular because the world had become weird.  In retrospect, it seems obvious that I should have read more Lovecraft, but I still didn't.

I read Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, Chambers, and others.  All the people that inspired Lovecraft, but I never read Lovecraft, still haunted by stories like "Dagon."  Arthur Jermyn was moving in a deeply subtle way that I still haven't identified--its undertones of racism are almost too odious to dwell on.  But stories like Nyarlathotep and Herbert West (a kind of take on Frankenstein) are too beautiful, and too fun, to easily dismiss.  But I'd never read "The Call of Cthulhu."  Or "Colour out of Space."  Or some of his best known works which best exemplify his philosophy and style.

Until this week.  I'm not sure why this week seemed the most appropriate time to sit down and read those seminal works.  It's obvious that some of the themes in "Cthulhu" are reflections of "Dagon."  Nevertheless, he tells a finer story in his later years, with a surer hand.  The evocation of the weird and terrible is deft and wielded by a master's hand.  I was surprised how much I enjoyed these stories, and continue to find myself surprised as I read on.  "Whisperer in Darkness" is next.

What's your favorite Lovecraft story?  How did you come to find weird fiction?  Share your story in the comments.