“The Color Out of Space” and “The Call of Cthulhu” are two stories that have already been reviewed in Seamus Cooper’s awesome series 12 Days of Lovecraft. He does a stellar job of summarizing these stories, and for that I refer you to him.  I really enjoyed these two entries because my reactions to the stories were opposite Mr. Cooper, and helped me question why I liked “The Color Out of Space” despite it being a snoozefest, and why I was underwhelmed by “The Call of Cthulhu.”

I chose the “The Call of Cthulhu” because I couldn’t very well introduce myself to Lovecraft without experiencing this Elder God first hand. Perhaps it’s due to all the hype and cultists, but meeting the tentacled immortal was a bit underwhelming for me. I agree he is a horrible and frightful thing, but I have found that I am more intrigued by Lovecraft’s unique environments and madness than his actual mythos.

What I did like about “The Call of Cthulhu,” was the use of the narrator’s uncle’s research papers and clippings, as well as found artifacts and paintings, that documented the weird wave of Cthulhu’s call. While the narrator basically paraphrases all of it, the papers’ existence paired with the various sources and witnesses lends the story an authenticity necessary to winning the reader’s trust. He creates this authenticity also in “The Color Out of Space,” by witnesses, newspaper articles, and scientific data.

[More evidence below…]

A sphinx-like mongrel chasing down decadent grave-robbers? Yeah, I’m sold. I loved this story so much I called all my friends to rave mad about it. But rather than preach to the choir here, I thought I would nerd out about the Decadents (a.k.a. Symbolism), whose heavy influence in this story won my heart.

Symbolism was an art movement that spanned most of Europe and the United States in the last few decades of the nineteenth century. It began in France, under the influence of Mallarmé and Baudelaire (both who translated and advocated Poe in France), as a literary movement, but immediately carried over into the visual arts of Gustav Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Arnold Böcklin. Symbolist theory began to emerge not only under the guidance of Mallarmé, but also in conjunction with the rejection of the Naturalist and Realist schools. These two schools advocated in both writing and fine art the depiction of nature and life as it is seen, sans exaggerations. These movements were more concerned with social issues, prescribing to the positivist trend that boomed with the Industrial Revolution.

Positivism called for a world based upon reason and technology, and only acknowledged “…one level of reality: nature,” as Michael Gibson writes in his Taschen coffee table book Symbolism. In Positivism, dreams were only for those who slept, and the sleeper was Symbolism.

[Dream on…]