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How mad are these mountains? Full thoughts after the break.
This was horribly slow to start. Say what you will about 'establishing isolation,' the first chapter and much of the second chapter went over my head with technical garble that I didn't care to understand about a mining operation.
It's only when they unearth the Old Ones that things get interesting. Describing their biology was interesting, their location, the dogs' reaction, ect were nice touches. And then the rest of the crew's flight over is the best part of the story, with the insanity inducing hallucinations. And the carnage at the camp was great. The problem is that these parts of the story were the only parts where it felt the descriptions were compelling to me, in a story that relies so wholly and totally on trying to be compelling in its descriptions.
At no point did I feel the mountains were as foreboding as he kept insisting they were. I could not sympathize with Lake, no matter how many times he put the word 'poor' before his name. I didn't see why the scientists were struck with fear, instead of awe or wonder, when gazing down at an impossible city.
Most debatable of all, I couldn't fathom the shoggoth. This was almost certainly intended. But...I don't really know if I liked that. Maybe it's a lack of creativity on my part, but when the author themselves say a thing is unfathomable, my imagination simply doesn't bother to try and fill in the imagery gap. It makes me more aware I'm reading words on a page rather than immersed in a scene. I'm not going to say I didn't enjoy it, because there were certainly interesting things to be told. But I think only one other bit really sticks out in the whole thing.
Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
I suppose you know who this is and as such, I know you know that I know that there is no way I can argue something to win you over (especially seeing as we have discussed this topic to near ad nauseum). With that in mind though, I would like to point out one area that may be worth you looking at from an alternative perspective. That area being the subject of the shoggoth.
ReplyDeleteNow to set the stage, consider that throughout this entire narrative, Lovecraft and his (essentially) self-insert protagonist have done their damnedest to describe the minutest detail of the expedition and anything related to it. No matter how bizarre and unnatural something is, Lovecraft pens out an apt enough description so that if you and I were to sit down and covertly sketch out what we thought an old one looked like, we would end up with pictures that were fairly similar. The same can be said for just about any other topic covered in the story as well as the majority of items Lovecraft discusses throughout his body of work. However, when things get truly beyond human rational, Lovecraft, a man known for his disgustingly at time descriptive prose simply throws in the towel and rather brilliantly says "I cannot describe this." Thus making you realize just how beyond human rational the thing in question is and thus the imagination is encouraged to run as berserk as possible. Now as you said this lead you to believe that you were merely reading words rather than experiencing the journey. I would say this is intentional, the story is a recounting of the protagonist's encounters in letter/article format.
Well that is my two cents anyway. Make of it and do with it as you will.