Stories: The Crawling Chaos, The Green Meadow, Winged Death, The Horror In The Museum, The Diary of Alonzo Typer, The Horror In The Burying Ground, The Electric Executioner, The Curse of Yig, The Mound, Two Black Bottles.
Price: $4.95 in the U.S, $6.95 in Canada.
Overview
S.T. Joshi mentions that Lovecraft put less work into his revisions than his regular
stories, and I suppose this book stands as testament to that.
This volume was originally published by Arkham House in 1970 as a
collection of 24 stories that Lovecraft reviewed and revised (which is how he earned most
of his income during his adult life). A reprint, with corrections by S.T. Joshi, was
published in 1989 (?). Carroll and Graf have selected what they believe to be the best of
those 24 tales and published it in this volume.
The Horror In The Museum is the sort of volume one might
buy at an airport gift shop counter or a secondhand bookstore (though the low price makes
that sort of unnecessary). In other words, it isn't the sort of book one buys and keeps
for years on end. These tales range the gamut from comical (The Horror In The Museum,
The Electric Executioner) to confusing (The Green Meadow), to strange (The
Crawling Chaos). However, one tale in this book is actually worth reading, The
Mound (more on that later).
It's not a good volume, to say the least. Thank God the cover art
is somewhat subdued, unlike DAW's Miskatonic University collection. One thing I'd
also like to mention is the low, low price: I couldn't believe that the book was selling
for $6.95 Canadian (I live in Toronto). As I mentioned before, it makes a good read on a
plane trip.
The Stories
The book opens with two rather weak stories, The Crawling Chaos and The Green
Meadow. The latter is probably one of the most confusing short stories I have read,
with a whole mishmash of locales and themes.
Winged Death is passable, I suppose (for a better take on
"the rival insect collector dies and haunts narrator in body of insect" theme,
read the story The Moth by H.G. Wells).
The Horror In The Museum is a comical story, to say the
least. The mad ravings of Rogers make for a few giggles, and the idea that the statue
brought by Rogers to the museum is the actual god is curiously un-Lovecraftian. Whether
Lovecraft meant for the story to be comical, I'm not sure.
The Diary of Alonzo Typer is a bit cliché. The narrator
visits an evil old house, slowly goes insane, and realizes himself to be descendant of a
monstrously evil family. Gee, I don't think Lovecraft ever used those sorts of plot
devices before. I wouldn't mind if it were good, but to top it off, it is not very well
written.
The next story, The Horror In The Burying Ground, is all
right, I guess, but suffers a bit, like many other stories in this book, from overused
plot ideas. It has shades of In the Vault.
The next one, The Electric Executioner, is slightly funny,
or rather ironic, in the way the narrator saves himself from the madman. I won't reveal
how he does it for people who haven't read it, but I must say, that guy would make a good
politician.
The Curse of Yig is middling. It is indeed interesting to
see how Yig is so much like a certain Lovecraft god that we've all heard mentioned
before...it is slightly tragic and ironic.
As I said before, The Mound is no doubt the best story in
the book. It manages to mix in Spanish explorers, the Mound People, Native Americans, and
a huge, ancient city existing below ground. It also gives a good explanation of the source
of the El Dorado myths and the lost cities of gold that the Spanish searched for, but
never found. It's the diamond in the rough, and I would say buy the book if only to read
this story.
Finally, Two Black Bottles is an slightly creepy little
story along the scales of The Terrible Old Man, or Cool Air.
In conclusion, if you haven't read The Mound, I would recommend getting this book. If you have, you should skip at least this edition and get Arkham House's newly corrected printing with lots more stories. If I ever get my hands on a copy of that, I'll compare the two.
Sean Rodgers