Kenneth Hite, Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales (Atomic Overmind Press, 2008)
As a horror fan, I have always felt a bit embarrassed to have to admit that my relationship with the works of H. P. Lovecraft has always been a bit, well, ambivalent.
On the one hand, Lovecraft wrote one of the first foundational texts of horror criticism, Supernatural Horror in Literature, a text which I have read many times. On the other hand, as far as Lovecraft's stories are concerned, I've often felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of stories, which come in a dizzying variety of collections, each with a different editor, and every one insisting that he has the secret key which unlocks the meaning of Lovecraft's works.
More to the point, quite honestly, such collections, including the online collections, rarely bother sifting the wheat from the chaff.
So where should the Lovecraft beginner begin?
The answer is, with Kenneth Hite's Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales.
In this compact little book totaling less than one hundred and ten pages, Hite introduces the reader to all fifty-one of Lovecraft's stories, arranged in chronological order by the date each story was written. In addition, Hite provides a very basic overview of literary criticism on Lovecraft's work along with Hite's own often incisive comments regarding the many academic fashions and critical interpretations which Lovecraft's work has undergone.
As far as sifting the wheat from the chaff, Hite is admirably honest when it comes to admitting that Lovecraft's writing can seem very uneven in quality (Hite mostly blames this on Lovecraft's editors, who have enthusiastically published works which Lovecraft himself felt were not of a quality to be publishable). Hite also admits that different Lovecraft scholars often disagree about the quality of different stories, with Hite providing his own personal list of the best stories: out of the fifty-one stories written by Lovecraft, Hite declares only seventeen stories to be considered essential reading.
Originally written as a series of blog posts made on Kenneth Hite's LiveJournal, each entry in the book addresses a different story, providing descriptions of such story elements as plot, theme, and characters, along with the date the story was written (this last makes it very easy for the reader to appreciate Lovecraft's growth as a writer).
While Hite has polished the text for this publication, it retains the casual tone and wide-ranging topics of the best online conversations. At the same time, Hite sticks to his original plan to act as a tour guide for readers of Lovecraft's work, pointing out the good parts and providing background context for Lovecraft's purpose in writing each story, whether it was as an immature but experimental story or as a response to some other writer or critic's work. I found Hite's thoughts on Lovecraft's mythology particularly fascinating.
The only weakness I found in Tour de Lovecraft was the assumption that the reader might be equally familiar with many of the contemporary Lovecraft scholars to whom Hite makes frequent casual references. While I have read a number of Joshi's works, for instance, I am not so familiar with his scholarship on Lovecraft that I could always understand where Hite disagreed with his interpretations. In addition, Hite's discussion of Lovecraft scholars had the feeling of being something of a "boys' club" consisting mostly of other male science fiction writers. Overall, however, these are secondary issues and do not detract very much from the quality of the book.
Tour de Lovecraft can be purchased as either a paper book or a PDF digital book at Indie Press Revolution.
