The Lurking Fear.

It is funny, I have started in this blog post on three separate days and each time I have allowed myself to be distracted, though I must qualify that the distractions were very pleasant. Anyway, I have started into the works of H.P. Lovecraft and I am very much enjoying them. He has a talent for using the English language in the fullness of its richly adorned accuracy. He also has a dismal worldview and a knack for creating believably obsessive or evil characters.

In fiction, there are few topics more fascinating than human distortion, primarily of the mind. Lovecraft uses the sometimes doubtful state of the protagonists sanity to lend a degree of ambiguity to the events. Are the nightmares surrounding him actually there? Or are they just his nightmares? On top of that, the protagonist telling the story is almost never entirely sound. Herbert West: Re-animator is a good example of how doubt can be thrown on the veracity of the whole story by a single paragraph at the end.

Now that I have read is work I find it hard to believe that I had not heard of him before my present advanced age of 19. Once I started reading I decided to look him up and read about his influence. He is the father of modern horror and suspense; to say nothing of his effect on science fiction and fantasy. Now that I have read some of his work I am also finding allusions to him in other books and, that most prolific medium for literary allusion, video games.

Anyway, time for me to get back to Plato...and then I get to write yet another paper about me.

PS: Oh. I almost forgot to mention the books surrounding Lovecraft's work in the library. Bodice rippers written by some hilarious pen-names. Couldn't get much more stereotypical.

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