“The Shadow Over
Innsmouth”
Here are some brief notions prompted by my re-reading of this story,
which I had not returned to for perhaps fifteen years. It is one of those held
in lower esteem by me. I remember on my first reading not liking the ending,
that it seemed tacked on, the “twist” forced. Sam Moskowitz
wrote, “the story suffers from an ending of dreamlike
fantasy that does not fit the projected mood” (p. 257, Explorers of the
Infinite (World Publishing Company, 1963). Also, the aliens lack the
requisite horror throughout, and the tale just didn’t engage me.
On my re-reading it, my attitude has changed, or my field of
appreciation, perhaps. Since I knew what was coming, I found that the
narrator’s self-discovery at the end is frequently foreshadowed. Here are two
examples. During his revelatory narrative, Zadok
Allen has an outburst and tells the narrator "Curse ye, dun't set thar a'starin' at me with them eyes.” We have already been introduced
to “the staring ‘Innsmouth look,’” so the remark is a
clue. Later, to escape his pursuers the narrator starts “imitating the typical
shamble of the Innsmouth folk as best I could,” which
is a success in part, ironically, because unknown to himself he is an Innsmouth folk.
When during his escape from those who might identify him, the narrator
states that he is “once more in shadow.” The use of “shadow” is both literal
and ironically figurative (and perhaps even punning; he determines that a key
is furtively trying a door’s lock “without the least shadow of a doubt”). The
word “shadow” and its variants appear twenty times, and I liked how it
accumulated meanings. It is usually in a metaphoric sense, as in “The ancient
spires and roofs of decaying Innsmouth gleamed lovely
and ethereal in the magic yellow moonlight, and I thought of how they must have
looked in the old days before the shadow fell.” The word frequently appears in
hyphenated form, as with “evil-shadowed Innsmouth.”
The sinister associations are transformed at the end, however, when the
community becomes “marvel-shadowed Innsmouth.”
This is neither the first nor the last time that a title-word
accumulates senses, sometimes the opposite of an apparent meaning. “Pickman’s Model” is both the model (“a vision that makes
models”) of the thing itself, and the thing itself (“the model he was using”),
while “The Dreams in the Witch-House” are not dreams, reflections of reality,
but a hyper-reality.
In the section of the story where the Innsmouth
protagonist is trapped in his room in the Gilman House, I was reminded for some
reason of a private eye story, such as that in the contemporary pulp, Black
Mask. Perhaps it was the idea of a single person, beset by bad guys and a
mystery, relying on himself to physically escape through forcing a door. Much
of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”
is a chase in which there is an obsessive interest in relative location.
First, when the narrator is trapped in the room he spends much verbiage in the
layout of the other rooms and the means of egress; compare this to the Philo
Vance mystery, The Canary Murder Case (Grosset
& Dunlap, 1927), where the layout of the rooms is important enough to be
illustrated in the text. At any rate, when the hero does get outside, he is
fascinated with what street goes into another, where they meet, etc. Why should
this take so much detail in the telling?
Maybe there is something going on here in the minute workings of horror
that simply eludes this reader. One critic (John McGinnis, The Maze and the
Minotaur) wrote of the importance of the maze in Lovecraft’s
writing, and perhaps here is a major example.
“The Shadow Over Innsmouth”
has some resemblance to At the Mountains of Madness, I think, in that
there is a static history given–in the former through the garrulous Zadok Allen and in the latter through the carvings about
the Old Ones. In both instances I felt like I was receiving exposition without
the advantage of dramatization.
However, I now appreciate the story’s ending for its poetry, its
Biblical resonance, and am no longer disappointed by its tone, nor does it seem
so at odds with the bulk of the story.
Many readers list this story as one of their favorites, but while I
appreciate it more, still not me. In the review of The Call of Cthulhu and
Other Weird Stories (The Guardian, 29 July 2000), Nicholas Lezard notes the Lovecraftian
formula includes escape from a frightening town, a mind on the verge of
crumbling, a hideous artifact, mass insanity, a cult, and a threat to the
planet. With the
exception of mass insanity, all the qualities that he mentioned appear in “The
Shadow Over Innsmouth,”
which he favorably comments on in the next paragraph. It is arguable that this
story is the most formulaic of all Lovecraft’s, and
perhaps as a result it supplies the most successful “peg” on which other
fantasy writers can hang their stories (e.g., Shadows Over Innsmouth). Maybe that is the chief reason I rate the
story on a lower level.
Monsters vs. Aliens
I had a correspondence with Timothy H. Evans, who wrote "A Last
Defense Against the Dark: Folklore, Horror, and the
Uses of Tradition in the Works of H.P. Lovecraft" (Journal of Folklore
Research 42 (2005): 99‑135). During it, I was drawn to think what
made a Lovecraft monster as opposed to an alien.
The former more likely arises in tales of supernatural horror (which I
prefer), the latter in science fiction, though a Lovecraft tale may very well have
a foot in both camps, as in having a good entity (the Great Race in “The Shadow
out of Time”) and the bad (the whistling things), or having the alien a mixture
of good and bad (“The Whisperer in Darkness”). The Great Race and the Old Ones
(At the Mountains of Madness) are both aliens, though monstrous in
appearance. They turn out not to be monsters because they have a culture or
civilization, plus superior minds. The same is true, I think, for the Deep Ones
(“The Shadow over Innsmouth”). In a way they are a
tribe of South Seas islanders that are coincidentally non-human. The result is
to replace much of the horror with anthropological romance.
To the degree that a monster is understood, it becomes less monstrous.
Cthulhu and the beings in “The Dunwich Horror” are
true monsters. They are outlandish–if not repulsive–in appearance, yet what
ensures they are monsters is their intent and purpose, irrational and inimical.
Moreover, good aliens are after knowledge, bad after domination.
The most problematic of the aliens or monsters are the fungi from Yuggoth (“The Whisperer in Darkness”). Not described too
exactingly, they have minds that are self-interested, pitiless, and amoral, in
some ways the dark side of the Great Race. So “The Whisperer in Darkness” melds
horror and science fiction more closely, perhaps, than any other story. Here knowledge opens
up vistas of horror along with the threat of medical experiments. It is more
what these aliens do rather than what they are which makes them real monsters.
Name
A debut
novel, Monkey Man by Stephen Price, has a character named Lee Lovecraft.
*** A “Theodore Lovecraft” has self-published Last Flight of the Fallen Valkyrie, about a ghost town in Michigan.
Perfumes
“Cthulhu”
and “Springtime in Arkham” are the names of two scents
from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.
Law
Chris J.
Karr has “A Report on the Copyright Renewals of the Works of H.P. Lovecraft.”
He reports on renewal records from 1950 to 1972.
Music
The Bismarck
Tribune carries an article about Troy Sterling Nies,
the composer for the silent movie adaptation, The Call of Cthulhu (see
more about it under “Movies”).
*** Besides including HPL, the group Bloodhag plays
short death-metal songs about such science fiction authors as Bradbury and
Asimov. *** An article ties in No-Neck Blues Band with HPL (who once was quoted on
the band’s website), Blackwood, and Dunsany.
Comic Books and Strips
As a
result of the Masters of Horror Showtime series, a limited edition comic book
will appear. Issues three and four are to be an adaptation of "Dreams in
the Witch House," written by Ivan Brandon and illustrated by Dennis Calero. *** The drawings are from the vigorously wholesome The
Family Circus, but the captions are from HPL. Darn funny. *** HPL is one of the authors in Horror Classics, volume 10 of Eureka
Productions black-and-white Graphic Classics series. *** “H. P.
Lovecraft in the Comics” includes covers of comic books his tales have appeared
in. Others will know better if there are omissions. *** In his genre collection Apocris 1 Michael Vance has the parody
"At the Mohills of Madness," which is from
a syndicated comic strip.
Movies
A
pornographic version of Re-Animator is Re-Penetrator.
*** Among the print-to-screen suggestions made by an MSNBC writer in an article
addressed to Peter Jackson (director of King Kong and Lord of the
Rings) are the works of HPL, notably “The Dunwich
Horror.” *** According to a producer quoted in The
Hollywood Reporter, a potential At the Mountains of Madness is
budgeted at $70 million and would be helmed by Guillermo del Toro, whose
notebook of drawings was photocopied for Steven Spielberg. *** The Call of
Cthulhu (2005) is in competition at the Slamdance
(and Sundance?) 2006 Film Festival and has gotten enviable reviews, e.g. "Wired
News" states it is “pulpy, eerie, fantastical and bound for cult status.”
Theater
Of the
100 productions by Seattle’s Open Circle Theater, those based on Lovecraft have
been by far the most successful.
The Gothic
The Sickly Taper is a website dedicated to the Gothic.
It notes the appearance this year of The
Guide to the Gothic III by the website’s author Fred Frank. There is a link to a short piece about HPL.
Computers
“The
Lovecraft Syndrome” has been encoded for the iPod.
There’s also an audio interview with the writer-director David Schmidt. *** Though not yet in existence, it seems a Lovecraft map mashup is a natural. This would present an online map (of
Providence or New England) with sites identifying biographical or fictional
associations. Currently there are such mashup map
examples as locations of public libraries in the U. S., but author worlds
should appear with time. To get an idea of what is available, see
googlemapsmania.blogspot.com.
Influence
The Dictionary
of Contemporary Quotations in 1976 quoted Robert Bloch upon receiving the
1975 World Fantasy life achievement award: “I haven’t had so much fun since the
rats ate my baby sister.” *** The online “Dictionary of Wisconsin History” has entries for August Derleth. *** In an interview,
author Paul L. Bates lists as favorite writers Kafka, Borges, and HPL. *** Russell Hoban
states HPL was “not too much an influence, I just love him"; and read him
to his children when they were small.
Contemporaries
Nostalgia’s The House on the Borderland is a cd
based on the William Hope Hodgson novel.
*** Collecting Edgar Rice Burroughs (Schiffer
Pub., 2000) by Glenn Erardi includes Burroughs’ pulp
appearances.
Ju-On
(aka The Grudge)
I was
impressed by this movie’s creepiness. It is not Lovecraftian,
save that it takes place in its own horror-world where atmosphere and
implication is strong. In it people disappear after involvement in supernatural
events. The things that are there are not seen, or are just glimpsed. I was
especially fond of a thing like black smoke that appears in a restroom and when
it comes out of the doorway is captured on videotape.
The
director of this movie, Shinya Tsukamoto, has originated another, Marebito, which according to one critic makes a
definite allusion to At the Mountains of Madness. There is a collection
of links to be found about it at “Unfilmable.”
This
has been the 47th issue of The Criticaster (finished January
2006 for February mailing 133) by S. Walker . Eventually published on the Net as a The Limbonaut
(no 18).
