(urth) The problem of Cthulhu

[don doggett]

I promise that this has to do with Wolfe. Honest. I
should be doing other things, but this has been
aggravating my brain, so forgive me if it rambles.

I dig Lovecraft. I abso-frickin love the mythos and I
enjoy reading what other writers do with it, but so
often they fail miserably. This is ironic because HP
Lovecraft was not a great stylist at all. That said,
even Borges wrote that his own attempt at writing a
Lovecraftian story was inferior to the real thing. So
. . . Lovecraft was a lousy writer, but he had a
fantastic idea and he understood it completely. What
makes the Great Old Ones so terrifying is that they
are completely alien, unknowable, invincible, and
malevolent.  The only reason that they haven't wiped
us out is that they are prevented by other equally
unknowable forces who, while not actively malevolent,
regard us as nothing particularly special. We are
alone, unloved, helpless, and our only salvation is
that we are by and large disregarded. That's scary
stuff.
     Enter August Derleth, who took over Lovecraft's
legacy. All of a sudden the Great Old Ones are
elementals of some sort. There's still some good stuff
in Derleth; the Necronomicon, weird disappearances,
madness, and a damned entertaining love story between
two of the frog people that serve Cthulhu, but
suddenly the forces of evil are knowable. We can
contain them in our head and they just aren't as
primally fear inducing.
     Recently, I've been reading Brian Lumley's Titus
Crow series, which directly involves the Cthulhu
mythos. Not good. Not good at all. Lumley's a better
writer than Lovecraft, better than Derleth too, but
not only are the Cthulhu deities knowable, they have
supervillian motivations. And not just that, they can
be fought, with technology apparently. Cthulhu is now
essentially a giant alien psychic squid. Lumley's
Lovecraft fails for me for the same reason the various
versions of the Necronomicon fail. They explain away
all the mystery, and thus all the horror.
     Now, some writer's get it right. Neil Gaiman's  A
Study in Emerald is brilliant. It involves Sherlock
Holmes, the Great Old Ones and a twist that is just
incredible. And it's creepy as hell.
And Wolfe. While they're not technically the Great Old
Ones, Erebus, Abaia, Scylla, and the Mother, are all
obvious analogs. Their motivations are largely
unknowable, their nature is unknown, and for that
reason they are majestic and terrifying. Wolfe
understands Lovecraft, and it leads to some pretty
creepy scenes throughout the BoTNS and several in the
Short Sun books as well. I think no one will ever
truly be able to explain Erebus and the rest, because
they are meant to be unexplainable. They simply are.
Btw, has Wolfe ever written a straight up Lovecraftian
tale?

thanks for your time
Don

The Evangelists: a Lesser Apocrypha                                                                        http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=178109961


 
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