The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft

Rating:
Summary: A Mixed Blessing for HPL fans
Review: Annotated Lovecraft--it sounds like a great idea, and it is. However, many of the annotations in this book seem unnecessary and irrelevant. Make no mistake, the stories themselves are some of HPL's best--"The Rats in the Walls," "The Colour Out of Space," "The Dunwich Horror," and the short novel "At the Mountains of Madness." A pretty good introduction by S. T. Joshi starts things off, and the final pages include some noteworthy comments on the art of writing horror (taken from some of Lovecraft's letters) and a short essay on the translation of Lovecraft's work into radio, TV, and film. This complementary material is very useful to someone just delving into the Lovecraftian universe, but the annotations are somewhat of a mixed bag.

While some of Joshi's annotations are quite interesting and useful, many seem to me to be totally unnecessary; some, such as biographical material, is interesting but immaterial to the stories themselves. For every chemical Lovecraft mentions, Joshi gives us the chemical formula and scientific name, which is okay if somewhat excessive. When some of the trademark Lovecraft terms pop up (e.g., eldritch), Joshi defines them; however, he also explains to us how aeon is an alternate spelling of eon, immensurable is synonomous with immeasurable, etc.--there are several unneccessary footnotes in each story explaining what seems to me to be patently obvious. Joshi also is fond of taking a notion from the text and explaining how Lovecraft "may have" been thinking of this or that, often ending the note with a quote of several sentences from authors such as Poe, Bierce, etc.--sometimes valid, sometimes not, usually over-the-top. He is also fond of referring back to his own footnotes from earlier in the book each and every time a certain subject is mentioned, which I find annoying.

Certainly, many of the annotations are useful, especially in the short novel At the Mountains of Madness. A good bit of the scientific nomenclature and theories, as well as geographic names, have changed since Lovecraft's time, and Joshi does the reader a great service in explaining what Lovecraft meant, what he was referring to, etc.; such important data contribute much to an understanding of the material and proper placement of the settings of the tales. While I would certainly recommend this book to Lovecraft readers, I would strongly suggest that anyone reading these stories for the first time ignore the footnotes completely. Besides sometimes giving away plot points to the current story and others, the footnotes totally interrupt the flow of your reading. To truly enjoy Lovecraft, you must immerse your mind in his language, structure, and flow. I don't think I can read any of these stories too many times, so rereading is more of a pleasure than a pain. Read these stories, move on to other things, then at some point come back and re-read the stories in conjunction with the annotations. You may well have to grin and bear it through many of the unneccessary, repetitive, and not entirely relevant footnotes, but you will gain some rewarding insights and make some new discoveries in these rich otherworldly tales by horror's greatest writer.

Rating:
Summary: Good background about Lovecraft
Review: I found the footnotes and forward in this edition to be a welcome addition to one of my favorite author's stories. The last mini biography I read on Lovecraft was bland, but this one was well researched. The collection of stories was a fair offering, too. One minor complaint was that there could have been some better captioning for the photos.

In addition to a biographical foreward there are footnote annotations on the pages of the stories.

Overall, it's a good choice for people who like the Lovecraft stories and would like to learn a little more about the author, and his intents.

Rating:
Summary: A Tough One to Review
Review: I've been a Lovecraft fan for decades, ever since I was a kid, and I loved this book. Joshi has taken some of Lovecraft's best works and illuminated each with the bright light of his scholarship.

There is a problem, however: Lovecraft appeals to a certain type of reader (IMO), and I think that the footnotes might detract greatly from the enjoyment of the stories for just such a reader; I know they did for me. Because of this, I feel that this is a great book for the already established Lovecraft fan, but might not be so appealing to someone who has just picked up Lovecraft for the first time. I could certainly be wrong about this, but I personally prefer to read Lovecraft's stuff in a different format, sans footnotes.

However, despite my misgivings, I ended up giving this book a five star rating based on Joshi's immaculate and voluminous scholarship. After all, the footnotes ARE the point here, illuminating, as they do, Lovecraft's eerie and unique prose.

I wouldn't have missed this one for the world.

Rating:
Summary: STORIES, PHOTOS, AND FOOTNOTES
Review: In a way, this book is good for both beginners and intermediate Lovecraft readers. If you're a beginner, you'll be pleased to know that--in my opinion--some of Lovecraft's best works are in this book. Namely, THE RATS IN THE WALLS, THE DUNWICH HORROR, and THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE. The novella AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is dreadfully long--read it only if you're bored to death and want to read about nightmare penguins and long architectural descriptions. No matter what story, beginners should skip the footnotes as it will only detract from your reading pleasure. If you're an intermediate Lovecraft reader, you might find SOME of the footnotes interesting, but certainly not all of them. There are some good photos in this book ranging from places that might have inspired Lovecraft, portraits of historical figures, and ESPECIALLY the four black and white pictures of eerie mountains done by Nicholas Roerich. In addition, one will find an essay by Lovecraft and also a very good Bibliography if you're looking for some other Lovecraft-related titles. If you've never read Lovecraft, here's what he is in a nutshell: Blend Edgar Allan Poe with a dash of Stephen King.

Rating:
Summary: Worth it for every Lovecraft fan
Review: Most reviewers have focused (understandably) on the annotations. However, this book is worth the price for the biographical introduction alone. I've been reading and rereading Lovecraft for probably 20 years, but those few pages gave me some important new insights into Lovecraft's perspective that made me anxious to read them again in a new light. The annotations, review of movies, and other supplements to the stories are gravy.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent introduction to Lovecraft's work
Review: Never having read Lovecraft before, I found this to be an excellent introduction. This book helps you over two essential hurdles when confronting Lovecraft: his sometimes arcane language and his ideas of bizarre literature. The notes and introductory text get you past each of these and into the heart of the stories, as well as linking these stories to events and places in Lovecraft's life and within his (and other's) fiction. I feel I can now get much more enjoyment from any of Lovecraft's stories than I could if I came to them cold. I get the feeling that the stories presented here are not the cream of the crop, but I think Joshi was trying to present a strong and varied selection of Lovecraft's work in order to whet people's appetites. He certainly succeeded with me. I'm deducting one star because of some minor quibbles, mainly that I wish there had been more and more relevant photographs (namely of some of the places the notes described which Lovecraft used as a basis for the settings in his stories) and that the photos had been captioned (you have to look at the list in the front of the book to find out what you are looking at). This book has made a Lovecraft fan out of me.

Rating:
Summary: To Read is To Read... To Understand Is Priceless.
Review: The stories in this volume are among Lovecraft's best and/or most substantial. This could serve as a good introduction, though I would recommend reading some of his stories without footnotes first, as they might tend to distract. As with any fiction with numerous footnotes, you wish for more in some places, whereas others seem unnecessary. (Does someone not know the definition of "cul de sac"?). I will also say that I was particularly fond of the annotations to "At the Mountains of Madness," and plan to reaad some of the referenced materials on early Antarctic exploration. But first, of course, I'm off to read "More Annotated HPL," review forthcoming...

Rating:
Summary: Great, but with a couple of glaring flaws
Review: This and its companion book, /More Annotated HP Lovecraft/, are excellent editions for readers who are deeply interested in the writer and his times, and where he got his ideas from. Joshi's annotations are often very helpful in understanding the stories better.

However, I was bemused to find that, not only is there no index in either book--something that really would have been a big help to researchers--but there is no table of contents! In fact, it is impossible to know exactly which stories are in each book without flipping through the pages. This is simply an inexcusable oversight, and reflects very poorly on the publisher. (I am sure that Mr. Joshi, who is a meticulous researcher, had nothing to do with these flaws.)

Rating:
Summary: One more layer of the onion...
Review: This is definitely not a "beginner's" Lovecraft. For those who are taking their first glance, I recommend "The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)." or "Best of H.P. Lovecraft : Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre ." It is also not an "expert's" Lovecraft, who have already tackled the fine Arkham House "Selected Letters" volumes, or such arcane tomes as "The Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft : The Route to Horror (New Studies in Aesthetics, Vol. 29)."

What it is, is an "intermediate's" Lovecraft, perfect for those who enjoy his stories, and want to peel back one small layer of the onion and look beneath the surface. The volume focuses on his major works, and the annotations range from the broad, such as definitions of words, to the minute, such as genealogy of local towns. There is a nice selection of photographs of Lovecraft's early homes and some locations of stories. The annotations also include some informative biographical notes that help explain his stories, such as Lovecraft's fear of seafood and the cold, or the fact that he was dressed as a little girl when he was a baby.

Definitely read other editions of his works first, so that you may enjoy his stories as stories. Then, when you want to take one small step further, give this annotated edition a try.

Rating:
Summary: The Contents of This Book
Review: With so many different Lovecraft collections out there, it may help prospective buyers to know what's actually in this one:

[By S. T. Joshi:] Acknowledgments; Introduction [an essay about H. P. Lovecraft and his fiction]; [By Lovecraft:] The Rats in the Walls [a short story]; The Colour Out of Space [another short story]; The Dunwich Horror [still another short story]; At the Mountains of Madness [a novella]; Lovecraft on Weird Fiction [excerpts from four letters to correspondents]; [By Joshi:] Lovecraft in the Media [an essay about dramatizations of Lovecraft's fiction in film, radio and television]; Select Bibliography

But there's more: A scattering of achival photos of persons and places in Lovecraft's life; another scattering, this time of brief tributes to Lovecraft excerpted from various writers; introductions by Joshi to each of the featured pieces by Lovecraft; and, above all, footnotes, lots of footnotes, by Joshi at the bottoms of the pages.

Most of the footnotes are pretty useful -- Lovecraft was a sophisticated, scholarly writer, and the typical contemporary (i.e. post-literary, electronic era) reader would miss or be stumped by many of his literary, historical, geographical and foreign language references. But too often Joshi goes beyond helping the reader better enjoy and appreciate Lovecraft's fiction, instead relating the fiction to picayune details of Lovecraft's personal life.

For example, on p. 28, the first person narrator of a story includes this sentence: "My father died in 1904 [footnote 10], but without any message to leave me, or to my only child, Alfred [footnote 11], a motherless boy of ten." Footnote 10 reads: "In fact, it was not Lovecraft's father but his grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips (1833-1904), who died on March 28, 1904. Lovecraft's father had been hospitalized in 1893 and died in 1898, and Whipple Phillips had in effect become his father." Footnote 11 reads: "Alfred: the name is possibly derived from Lovecraft's young friend Alfred Galpin (1901-1983). They had come into contact in 1918 and remained voluminous and close correspondents to the end of Lovecraft's life. When Lovecraft first met Galpin in Cleveland in August 1922, he addressed him as 'my son Alfredus' (Selected Letters, I, 191)."

Give me a break! That's important material for a detailed biography of Lovecraft -- and Joshi has written and had published just such a book elsewhere -- but of little significance to the reader simply trying to get at the meaning and intrinsic pleasure of a work of fiction. Who but a biographical researcher would want to be distracted by such stuff?

So on the one hand Joshi speaks to the stuffiest scholar, and yet often talks down to the reader who's reasonably well-educated. Do we really need to be told what Druids were (p. 30), or who the Marquis de Sade was (p. 32), or what silicon is (p. 66)? Nonetheless, read discriminately, the annotations are helpful for better fathoming Lovecraft.

As to the printing of the volume, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the typeface of the main texts is large and easy to read. (The annotations are quite small, though.) The bad news is that the text is rife with typos. Dell Publishing, get your act together!

In sum, this book (and its sequel, More Annotated H. P. Lovecraft) probably belongs on the bookshelf of every serious Lovecraft reader, right next to Arkham House' Lovecraft collections. The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (like its sequel, More Annotated H. P. Lovecraft) is a handy and inexpensive reference for some of Lovecraft's best stories. A warning, though: Don't read Joshi's footnotes on a first reading of a Lovecraft story -- allow yourself to follow Lovecraft's narrative uninterrupted so you can capture the mood and sense of surprise that lie within.