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"West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs." - The Color Out of Space, HP Lovecraft Lovecraft gets a lot of poo poo for the "unnamable eldritch crawling madness" stuff, probably because it's so easy (and fun) to parody, but he was a lot more sparing with it than his reputation suggests. Particularly once he got really good in 1927 or so, he only let it off the chain when the story demanded it, because the narrative, or the narrator, or both, were collapsing into utter insanity. For the most part he was a lot more restrained and detached, as with this, the opening to probably his best story. I don't think there's a word out of place here--there are quite a few adjectives of course, but nothing you wouldn't see in an unremarkable travel journal of the time, and they all work to paint a vivid picture. Lovecraft was terrific at describing landscapes and architecture (looking at buildings was about the only thing that got him out of the house), I don't think he gets enough credit for that. I could probably have cut this down to the first seven words; it's a perfectly balanced phrase and it gets my imagination going like nothing else.
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Aug 12, 2015 16:36
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 11:08 |
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