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Sto caricando le informazioni... H.P. Lovecraft (Starmont Reader's Guide ; 13)di S. T. Joshi
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Appartiene alle SerieStarmont Reader's Guide (No. 13)
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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I had been paging through this book for 21 years without actually reading it cover to cover (as well as looking through other Joshi writings on Lovecraft), so there wasn't a lot here that I found new. Still, I found some stuff new and interesting.
Concerning particular stories, Joshi makes the intriguing claim that Rome-loving Lovecraft was inspired by Constantine taking the treasures of the Western Empire to Constantinople when he had the Old Ones of his "At the Mountains of Madness" stock, in their declining phase, their capital city in the Antarctic with treasures from their other cities. Furthermore, Joshi makes the claim (and I shall have to pay attention next time I read it) that "The Haunter of the Dark" is, like "The Thing on the Doorstep", a tale of psychic possession.
Joshi makes the plausible observation that Lovecraft's style is unique because it combines "the classic essay-form" (presumably he means the 18th century masters of the English essay that Lovecraft admired so much -- though he was fond of Latin writers as well) with a concern for sound and rhythm gained by his years of largely unsuccessful poetry composition. I did not know -- but it's hardly surprising given his aristocratic nature, support for amateur writing (though he did take ghostwriting jobs), and willingness to live on $2 a week to live by writing -- that one of the reasons none of Lovecraft's works was published in book form in his lifetime was that he himself refused to prepare either The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward for book publication even though several publishers asked him to do so.
I'm wondering how much talent or interest Lovecraft had in mathematics given that the mathematical notions of "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" come from Lovecraft's collaborator E. Hoffmann Price.
Lovecraft kept a Commonplace Book. Though I've read all of Arkham House's Lovecraft fiction collections (I have not yet read Lovecraft's Miscellaneous Writings which does have some fiction works.),
Joshi also has an interesting chapter on Lovecraft's poetry and essays. (This book admirably fulfills the purpose of the Starmont Reader's Guide series, of which it is a part, in being a good introductory monograph to its subject author.) The book ends with a good annotated biography which shows that Joshi, born in 1958, has been writing about Lovecraft since 1977. ( )