(no subject)
While many of Lovecraft’s stories still hold up today, Under the Pyramids, ghost-written for Harry Houdini, fails that test.
Part of the problem is that I know how much of his story is based on old theories and wild speculations. But certainly that isn’t enough to throw me out of the story; I’ve enjoyed stories set on green, verdant Venus or on Mars teeming with native life, or in which the humanity carries the Cold War to the stars.
While most of Lovecraft’s work was based on locations he knew on a first-hand basis, when writing of Cairo, he was writing from imagination, and it shows. His portrait of Cairo is as thin as a Hollywood backdrop. All the lovely prose in the world can’t make it three-dimensional.
Lovecraft never made it to Antarctica, but his descriptions of wind-scoured ice sheets perfectly evokes the feeling of desolation so vital to the story.
Perhaps the explanation is simpler; “Under the Pyramid,” with its unmotivated and racist portrayal of the villains and its it-was-all-a-dream ending weaken the story so much that it was doomed to collapse under its own weight.
This entry was originally posted at http://kit-r-writing.dreamwidth.org/481856.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Part of the problem is that I know how much of his story is based on old theories and wild speculations. But certainly that isn’t enough to throw me out of the story; I’ve enjoyed stories set on green, verdant Venus or on Mars teeming with native life, or in which the humanity carries the Cold War to the stars.
While most of Lovecraft’s work was based on locations he knew on a first-hand basis, when writing of Cairo, he was writing from imagination, and it shows. His portrait of Cairo is as thin as a Hollywood backdrop. All the lovely prose in the world can’t make it three-dimensional.
Lovecraft never made it to Antarctica, but his descriptions of wind-scoured ice sheets perfectly evokes the feeling of desolation so vital to the story.
Perhaps the explanation is simpler; “Under the Pyramid,” with its unmotivated and racist portrayal of the villains and its it-was-all-a-dream ending weaken the story so much that it was doomed to collapse under its own weight.
This entry was originally posted at http://kit-r-writing.dreamwidth.org/481856.html. Please comment there using OpenID.