Monday, December 10, 2018

The Dreams in the Witch House (a book review post)

To say that Lovecraft was obsessed with dreams would be an understatement. I should probably do a count of how many of his stories have dreams as a main component, but I'm not going to do that. Someone else probably already has, anyway, and I'm not even going to look and see. Why? Because I just don't care. Generally speaking, Lovecraft's dream stuff is ludicrous. Yeah, you can probably tell I'm at the end of my patience with Lovecraft and his shit. Because his stuff was, on the whole, shit. And his writing didn't get better as he practiced. If anything, it got worse. Like with this story...

Granted, his career was cut short by his early death but after... some way too large amount of stories, you'd expect them to start improving. You'd expect some sort of variation or evolution or... SOMETHING! But, no, as with Tim Burton and his inability to quit putting Edward Scissorhands into every fucking movie he makes, Lovecraft seemed to have gotten stuck on one idea and just kept revolving around it and around it and around it. Not to mention the fact that "Cyclopean" is probably a word you never need to use more than once in your lifetime (unless you play Magic, because some the cards make use of the word), and Lovecraft used it ALL THE FUCKING TIME!

And, sheesh! Yes, I know that Edward Scissorhands is not literally in every one of Burton's movies, but, if you watch Burton end to end, I think you'll find he mostly keeps making that same movie over and over again. Mostly.
But I digress...

So, yeah, this book... Young man obsessed with oculty things moves into a house that was previously owned by a woman accused of being a witch. He starts having strange dreams... until all the evidence begins to show that they are not dreams at all, but he keeps telling himself they are. Basically, he ignores all the evidence and refuses to really do anything to stop what's happening, choosing to live in la-la land instead, until it's too late and people end up dead. Pretty typical Lovecraft.
Sounds kind of like Republicans, actually...

2 comments:

  1. That's one of the few stories that I never got around to reading. The thing I like about his stories is that they're...atmospheric. They paint a picture. But then they get screwed up with every other Lovecraft trope there is.

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    1. Jeanne: They all paint the same picture. There's probably only three or four of his stories that are worthwhile; all the rest are variations of those.

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