We’ve just resuscitated it! And the 15th meeting starts tonight at 9 pm (GMT). Details here:

http://www.fustar.info/2011/01/04/dreadful-thoughts-the-pattern-is-torturing/

Please do come and play. We’d love to…er…have you.

I’ve thought about the Twitter option and some jazzier live-blogging options but I kind of like having the discussion thread archived neatly for posterity. Old-fashioned I know. I may reconsider – if the kids want it!

(Is there some way to do this though Twitter now, maybe?)

Lovecraft’s heroes don’t get much of a break: if they succeed in solving whatever mystery is placed before them, they either go stone raving mad, or are devoured by a monstrosity, or wish desperately to forget, or believe everything they saw to be a hallucination!

I guess that in contrast to traditional mystery stories – where the investigator is leant some sort of potency & agency through the act of investigating & uncovering the truth – the bleak outlook for Lovecraft’s heroes is down to their utter powerlessness. Their cosmic meaninglessness. They can uncover (through cunning & determination) whatever they like but they’re still a mere speck of nano-dust blowing in a vast cosmic gale.

The truth isn’t liberating – it only confirms how hideous and meaningless human existence is!

Something about de la Poer (and his relationship with Norrys) which we haven’t mentioned yet is the death of his son – a theme that pulsates gently in the background throughout (and reaches quite moving conclusion in the final scenes of madness: “The war ate my boy, damn them all”).

There’s also the notion of forgetfulness as a balm and a release that connects (again) with “The Outsider”.

“Rats”: “Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.”

“Outsider”: “But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is nepenthe”.

Rats is curious in this regard, in that there’s clearly something – some supernatural force – that causes his degeneration into the monstrous cannibalism that his ancestors enjoyed (what with the dreams, the ghostly rats). By comparison, in the Cthulhu stories the monsters that stalk Arkham or wherever are always material, and usually aliens. I also think that Rats comes across to me as a trial run for Charles Dexter Ward in its themes.

And aliens who were worshipped as gods by nasty human followers, no? Funny you mention aliens as the description of the vast cavern beneath the priory remined me (instantly) of the Giger-designed alien ship in Alien. I’m sure Giger must have read (and absorbed) Lovecraft so…er…um…I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with this.

What he shares with Poe (and Lovecraft took this up a notch or two) is that he’s much less a ghost story writer (in the traditional sense) and much more a creator of horror.

Rats is curious in this regard, in that there’s clearly something – some supernatural force – that causes his degeneration into the monstrous cannibalism that his ancestors enjoyed (what with the dreams, the ghostly rats). By comparison, in the Cthulhu stories the monsters that stalk Arkham or wherever are always material, and usually aliens. I also think that Rats comes across to me as a trial run for Charles Dexter Ward in its themes.
As regards the conclusion of Rats: you’d think Norrys, an ex-soldier, would put up more of a fight against his maddened assailant, and wouldn’t the noise of the struggle, and the yells of “ungl! ungl!” (in a cavern!) bring back the others rather quickly? Too quickly to allow our cannibal friend to kill and begin eating Norrys? I wonder…

He’s clearly (and I think he admitted as much) hugely indebted to Poe – with “The Outsider” (early work) being a good example of this. What he shares with Poe (and Lovecraft took this up a notch or two) is that he’s much less a ghost story writer (in the traditional sense) and much more a creator of horror. In that sense, it’s not a surprise that he still has a big fan-base among Fangoria-type fan-boys! (those who might consider M. R. James a bit too genteel). His stuff is physical & visceral – full of abject and pulsating monstrosity.

RE; “Rats” – there is, as you say, an inevitability about the descent. It’s not even a comeuppance in the traditional (moral) supernatural tale sense either. There’s nothing to be learned, I don’t think – bar (possibly) the dangers of not letting ghosts of the past lie. The narrator is drawn from America to England, from his lofty tower bedroom to the crypt, from the crypt to the nightmarish underworld beyond. The progress (or regress!) seems impossible to sidestep. It’s just what you are. It’s in you.

This, of course, might owe something to HP’s regressive notions about blood, race and so forth.