A Royal Coupling Book

I've never read any of Carter's writing other than his Conan stories. These, perhaps because of the immediate comparison to Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories, failed miserably to impress. Where Howard was, in my humble opinion, an excellent, original story teller, Carter (as well as L. Sprague DeCamp and Bjorn Nyberg) seems to have been pretty darned average. Carter's tired clichés and clumsily imitative style replace Howard's unique ideas and gripping narratives. Perhaps, if I had read Carter's writing from before his association with Conan, my opinion would be higher. However, the chances of me giving any of this work a try are pretty slim.

Turns out, Carter is better at writing non-fiction than fiction, at least from what I've read. Lovecraft: A Look Behind The Cthulhu Mythos is fairly engaging throughout. Honestly, if this book wasn't about Lovecraft and his work, I wouldn't have been able to get through it. However, given my interest and Carter's writing, this was a fairly good read.

Still, the book has its disappointments, first and foremost being the "controversy" about which books should and shouldn't be included in the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft never used the term and, in fact, considered all of his stories to be related. He did differentiate between what he called his "Poe stories" and his "Dunsany stories," but never did he consider these parts of different worlds or story cycles. So, ultimately, these parts of the book were purely academic and of not much interest to this reader.

Carter's statements about Lovecraft's lack of confidence and self esteem comes off as arrogant and superior, sometimes even spiteful. I'm not even sure Carter's intent in these instances was to be insulting but it's difficult to think one of Lovecraft's old buddies would have let these statements go without offering Carter a good, old fashioned ass whuppin'.

Also disappointing is the general short shrift Carter gives to Lovecraft's writing talents. We all know Lovecraft was no literary genius, but that's about as beside the point as you can get. What Lovecraft did was to create a concept, if you will, that so excited the imagination of other writers that they adopted his creations and added to them. To me, that's a far greater literary achievement than being a Hemingway or whatever. Carter criticizes "The Call Of Cthulhu" as having no story while praising the journalism style writing, again missing the entire point. When Lovecraft wrote the story in 1926, while he did have precedents, he was presenting a more or less totally unique method of writing a suspense/horror/weird tale. As I've said, I've only read Carter's Conan stories but there is a decided lack of anything unique or original in those. The world thrilled upon the release of The Blair Witch Project but those of us familiar with Lovecraft had seen that trick before.

And if it seems that Carter is making an awful lot of assumptions about how people felt about things or what something meant or implied, it's because he is.

All complaints aside, I did enjoy reading Lovecraft: A Look Behind The Cthulhu Mythos because it's about something I like and there are many insights into Lovecraft and his work. Carter does a thorough job and clearly poured hours and hours into his research. Also, if you want to read more stories in the vein, this is an excellent introduction to the several writers who, inspired by Lovecraft, have written Cthuloid tales of their own.

In fact, one of the most fascinating aspects of Lovecraft's story was the Lovecraft Circle. Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch and others, through reading Lovecraft's stories and corresponding via letters, were inspired to write stories of their own using Lovecraft's concept, themes and many of his characters. I don't know of another example of this kind of phenomena in literature.

Though it's no masterpiece, Lovecraft fans will very likely enjoy this book for the simple fact that it's about Lovecraft and his writing.