Want to read Lovecraft. But Where to begin?

[j d worthington]

Wilum: Noyes was most likely not the one who stole the stone, etc., given the description by the official of the perpetrator of those acts. It was more likely Brown, who seems to have been a very small fish... and who was also likely the one shooting at the house. Noyes, on the other hand, seems to have been an intermediary, serving as hierophant during the ceremony which is recorded, and also as the "guide" for Wilmarth, taking him to Akeley's house. He also has a few other minor activities in the story, but these would be, if memory serves, his major ones.

My main problem with this story is the rather inept charade the fungi indulge in; it simply seems beneath beings of this rank to engage in such activities. Their human servitors, no; like the Cthulhu cultists, they might well do this sort of thing; but the fungi themselves? That seems, frankly, rather puerile.

The strengths of the tale, of course, make up for these flaws (in the main), and the atmosphere is superb, not to mention the use (as in "The Dunwich Horror") of the landscape as character. But because of the things listed above, and the fact that the creatures are introduced too abruptly and too early, without (to me) an appropriate amount of emotional preparation, it has never been as strong a tale as it deserved to be....

 

[Ningauble]

Wilum: Noyes was most likely not the one who stole the stone, etc., given the description by the official of the perpetrator of those acts. It was more likely Brown, who seems to have been a very small fish...

Actually, I think that the man who stole the stone ("Stanley Adams") was a fungus in disguise, based on his "queerly thick droning voice".

 

[j d worthington]

Actually, I think that the man who stole the stone ("Stanley Adams") was a fungus in disguise, based on his "queerly thick droning voice".

Again, this is the danger of going on memory (it's been a while since I last read this one). Right you are.... Odd that I had never made the connection concerning the voice before. Sometimes, I really wonder if senility hasn't come more than a tad early.....

 

[Hardlight]

I would agree with either Dunwich Horror or The Call of Cthulhu. Especially the latter, since that's the story most associated with Lovecraft.

 

[Bick]

I started with, Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft. It takes awhile to get used to his writing style, but when you do, the stories he conjures up are wonderful.

I have this one - a good Del Rey Anthology.

 

[Ningauble]

I have this one - a good Del Rey Anthology.

Decent selection, but it has textual issues like almost all Del Rey collections of Lovecraft.