The Taint of Lovecraft

Rating:
Summary: Author's Comments
Review: Experts from "Cemetery Dance" magazine's review (Issue 45, 2003, pg. 108, authored by Garrett Peck):

"Stanley C. Saregent is the most intelligent of the current crop of Mythos-inspired authors, as admirably demonstrated in his first collection, ANCIENT EXHUMATIONS. This second collection of Lovecraftian works is likely his last, however, as Richard A. Lupoff informs us in his introduction. ... Having studied Lovecraft's fiction in great depth, Sargent has found clues toward deeper meanings and hidden agendas that have inspired his fresh takes on some of Lovecraft's best-known work. ... 'Live Bait' revisits 'The Shadow over Innsmouth,' pulling a stunning reversal. ... Three short-shorts ... are hysterically funny takes on the sometimes overly serious Mythos. ... The centerpiece is the astounding novella "Nyarlatophis, A Fable of Ancient Egypt," the author's longest piece to date. ... Sargent has the uncanny ability to make a world lost in antiquity come vividly to life on the page. ... Readers of this book who haven't read Sargent's previous collection will certainly clamor to. ..."
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The story "The Black Brat of Dunwich" won the Origins award for Best Short Story of the Year in 1999 and received an honorable mention from Ellen Datlow in THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR. S.T. Joshi praised the story as a "clever deconstruction" of the original Lovecraftian tale in "Weird Tales" magazine, and Thomas Ligotti has also praised the tale (in a private communication to the author). Lovecraft scholar Ken Faig has also praised THE TAINT OF LOVECRAFT highly in print, and the late Hugh B. Cave praised the book highly as well.





Rating:
Summary: No Lovecraft Pastiche Here, Only Originality and Brilliance!
Review: I've been reading Mythos and Lovecraftian pastiche since the late 70s. I've read it in book collections, magazines and fanzines. I've read it on the net and people have sent me their personal works through snail- and e-mail. After two and a half decades of reading this material my conclusion is that most of it really is drek. When I was a kid and saw a movie that I really liked, I would go home and try to recapture those memories by drawing what I had seen in the theater. Those drawings were crude and poorly thought out, with the attempt being to just catch those visceral moments of inspiring imagery. It got my jollies going but it didn't for anyone looking at the "artwork". That is what most Lovecraft pastiche is; a quick regurgitation of what a reader liked about his writings in the first place, but without a clear and thought out structure to their imitations. Just monster names and adjectives.

This is not what Sargent does, not in the slightest. He has taken the form known as "Mythos Fiction" and turned it on its ear. There is no multi-page spewage to name terrible tomes in a crazed professor's library or recitations of the long list of Great Old Ones which will likely show up at the end of the tale. There are no final tableaus that read "My God! I can hear it clawing at the window! It's going to....." .

But what there is in Sargent's writing which makes it so fascinating and satisfying to read is that he takes a seed of Lovecraftiana and grows his own tale out of it. He does not luridly imitate or ape Lovecraft (except in moments of satire) in any way, but instead uses a Lovecraftian idea or subject as the premise of a story and then playfully builds something completely new and different out of it.

There are several forms his Lovecraft inspired writings take and each are on display in THE TAINT OF LOVECRAFT. What we have in front of us with this book is horror/science fiction ("The Love of Their Craft"), satire ("The Insider"), dark humor ("An End to Worry", "Double Screecher"), we have fiction based off of clever, original and untraditional analysis ("Black Brat of Dunwitch") and even some true horror ("Live Bait") which has the best horrorific and twist-ending that I have personally read in 25 years of Mythos reading. I'd dare say it has a better twist ending than anything the 'Old Gent' ever came up with himself. We also find a thoroughly and thoughtfully researched historic novella, "Nyarlatophis: A Fable of Ancient Egypt" which takes place within Sargent's true playground of knowledge; archeology, especially within Egypt and the reign of Ahkenaten in the 18th Dynasty.

Sargent does not write in order to just hear the same old Mythos names called out again and again, he writes to further a body of work based on knowledge, research, wit, humor and a passion to write the best and most entertaining story possible. Why do I know this to be so? Because I've read this book and it is not written by a lazy fan who wants to relive a simple Lovecraftian thrill! You'll understand this too when you read it and you'll be glad you did.

I've also read his first collection ANCIENT EXHUMATIONS which includes more of Sargent's clever wit, dark humor and intelligent writing. So if you like TAINT you will want to look up ANCIENT EXHUMATIONS +2, which is a reprint with some new art and two of Sargent's latest stories (one based in the world of Clark Ashton Smith ("The Black Massif") and a chilling non-Mythos tale ("Famine Wood").

PS., As an adult I no longer draw pictures based off of movies I have seen, but I will do illustrations based off of literature that truly inspires me. That means that within the world of Lovecraftian fiction I do not illustrate very much, but I will gladly illustrate for Stanley Sargent because his writing is truly worth the time and effort. I am proud to decorate his tales with my art. -D.A.R.

Rating:
Summary: Embarrasingly awful
Review: If you want to read bad fan fiction -- and bad Mythos fan fiction is about the worst crap you can find this side of porn -- then TAINT OF LOVECRAFT is a great place to start.

Don't misunderstand me here. I think Lovecraft was a great original. Only now, with his pervasive influence seeping through modern culture like Cthulhu and his spawn seeping down from the stars, is the power of the Old Gent's concepts and style finally being taken seriously. Many fine writers have explored the byways of HPL's cosmos -- Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, Ramsey Campbell, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, etc. However, many writers who ought to stick to plumbing have moved into Lovecraft Land. Stanley Sargent is King of the Pipe Wrench, if you get my drift.

The old saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover" really applies here. TAINT has a very cleverly retouched photo grafting HPL's visage onto the statue of an Egyptian god. The cover is the best thing about TAINT (although some of the illos are good, too).

What is so frustrating about these stories is their unrelenting amateurishness -- amateurish in the sense of incompetence. Let me list only a few of the author's more egregious errors -- such as repeatedly mistaking "disburse" for "disperse." (Check your Funk & Wagnall's, Stan.) Then there's the amusingly ludicrous moment when an ancient Egyptian uses the modern scientific term "mutant." (Can you spell "anachronism"?) Other silly errors, like using "donned on him" for "dawned on him", MAY be mere typos. In charity, let us hope so -- but I think the hope is vain. I've read TAINT from cover to cover, you see.

Then there's Sargent's ludicrous attempts at Yankee dialect. (Even Lovecraft himself admitted that his isolated & inbred Dunwichers spoke in such a way as to make a typical New Englander wonder what stage they'd come from.) Well, Sargent makes his Innsmouthers speak a grade of "hick talk" so thick you couldn't cut it with Leatherface's chainsaw. And this is supposed to be set in modern times, when Innsmouth is enjoying contact with the outside world (unlike the hill folk of Dunwich, who owed their peculiar dialect to their extreme isolation).

Then there are the annoying neologisms (like "croakish"). They're purely stupid. They merely underline the unnaturalness of Sargent's attempts at pseudo-scholarly diction.

Editor Robert M. Price, once a respectable Lovecraft scholar, but who has become increasingly irrelevant in recent years, really goes over the top in praising these poor stories. But then, Price openly espouses Lin Carter, one of the worst writers EVER, as his "guru," so his taste is suspect, to put it mildly.

Let's look at a couple of highlights. "Their Love of Craft" (believe me, this lousy pun is the cleverest part of the piece) is a lame melange of "At the Mountains of Madness" and FORBIDDEN PLANET. It also smacks a bit of Bradbury's "Mars is Heaven!" Only thing is, this story has none of the admirable qualities of its sources.

"All Things Come" and "Nyarlatophis" both equip Lovecraft's wonderfully alien monstrosities Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep with a complete range of HUMAN emotions! Poor Lovecraft would die of embarrassment if he ever read this stuff. Sargent also continues this foolish trend of putting human speech & attributes into the mouths of nonhuman monsters in "Double Screecher." Yes, yes, I KNOW this is satire. That doesn't justify a dumb idea. (Anyone who really loves Lovecraft's stuff would realize the sheer fatuity of this approach.) This story is even sillier than the time Stephen King turned the unholy Plateau of Leng into a bunch of extradimensional gun smugglers, in NEEDFUL THINGS. (No, I'm not making that up. Shame on you, too, Steve.)

As for Sargent's "poetry," let us pass over it in merciful silence. It's supposed to be funny, but it ain't. 'Nuff said.

There are a couple of bright spots, though. "The Starston Text" is a case where Sargent's rather sophomoric humor does work. And "The Black Brat of Dunwich" is kind of amusing in a goofy way, if only because the author is so thoroughly hellbent on standing "The Dunwich Horror" on its head. Not that "Black Brat" is a good story -- but it is amusing, compared to the rest of this dreary collection. The story ends poorly, with a Derlethian-style drag-in-more-Mythos-monsters-even-if-it-doesn't-make-a-lick-of-sense finish. (Thought question: why should the Deep Ones give a camel's hump about helping Yog-Sothoth sweep the earth clean of all life? They'd die, too. I guess Stan didn't think of that.)Sargent makes the basic assumption that all Mythos entities automatically are in league with each other. O-kay. He's evidently been reading a bit too much of Brian Lumley's goofy Mythos fiction.

In short, this is a really bad book. THE TAINT OF LOVECRAFT is an unfortunate smear on HPL's memory. It should be titled THE TAINT OF SARGENT. But hey, if you like this sort of thing, go for it. I wasted my time and money on it -- and as they say, misery loves company.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: What a wonderful book. If you are not familiar with the work of Stanley Sargent, I heartily recommend this book. For once Cthulhu Mythos aficionados can revel in a new, individual voice. Indeed, it is the distinct "voice" of each of the selections in this book that remains so impressive. That and the fact that Sargent (like Robert Bloch before him) is one of the few Mythos writers that successfully mixes horror and humor.

Probably one of the most satisfying aspects about the "Taint" is that the reader gets to sample Sargent in various aspects of his craft - from straight, Mythos horror, to subtle humor, to irreverent poetry and well-researched analysis. (The central novella, Nyarlatophis, set in ancient Egypt, is also superbly researched and delivered.) His range is as varied as is his manner of delivery - from a creepy "Live Bait," a sequel to H.P. Lovecraft's famous (and disturbing) "Shadow Over Innsmouth," to a thought provoking "Black Brat of Dunwich"-- a different interpretation of Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror." The two should be read side by side for the remarkable insights and conclusions Sargent manages to draw from Lovecraft's original story. To be honest, I found all the stories in this volume interesting and surpirsingly successful - despite their different construction and delivery. In the last story: "Double Screecher" Sargent manages to perfectly capture the claustrophobic paranoia of an insecure man in a movie theater. But don't be misled, you will think the story is going one way but then Sargent will pull the rug out from under you and go in an entirely different direction. Fabulous!

Another aspect of Sargent's savvy work that I found most appealing was his fluid style - and the individual timbre of each story which had a distinct feeling and "voice" all their own. Part of this is due to his gift of knowing how to give the reader just enough detail to prompt their mind into its own tangents of description. In other words, instead of describing something in complete detail, he gives the reader just enough key words or phrases which then propels their mind into creating its own mental scenarios. A rare gift. I found this especially impressive in such stories as "Live Bait."

If all that were not enough, the book has illustrations by D. L. Hutchinson, Allen Koszowski, Daniel Alan Ross, Peter Worthy, Jeffrey Thomas and Stanley Sargent himself! The book is also given a superb introduction by Richard A. Lupoff, which immediately establishes the quality of entertainment that will be found between the book's covers, and each story is prefaced by comments from none other than Robert M. Price - the respected and veteran Lovecraft scholar.

Do yourself a favor and get this book. Sargent is a vivid, colorful writer. It is most unfortunate that his first volume of stories, Ancient Exhumations, is now out of print.