9781902197371

H. P. Lovecraft, one of the great obsessive writers of the 20th century, naturally chose the pulp genre of "weird horror" in which to exorcise his acute anatomical alienation and existential torment. Within the matrix of his grotesque yet complex mythology, Lovecraft was able to conjure a hideous universe lying just beyond our own; his relentless style and language forging a convoluted, midnight-purple literary form which ultimately achieves a veritable "pornography" of horror: the accumulation and repetition of his demonic visions climaxing in orgasms of cosmic revulsion.Crawling Chaos comprises a chronological collection of this unique writer's best work; from his distinctive collaborative pieces, prose-poems and early tales of the gruesome and bizarre, through to the maturation and efflorescence of his personal cosmology, the Cthulhu Mythos.This new expanded edition, published in two volumes, has been enhanced by stories not previously included; Volume One includes the bonus stories "Herbert West, Re-Animator" and "The Shunned House". With an introduction by acclaimed author Colin Wilson.

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When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corner he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strewn meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned. Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoor-wills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the doomed hills among which it rises. As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooden sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, ...

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Crawling Chaos: Selected Weird Fiction: 1928-1935

Crawling Chaos: Selected Weird Fiction: 1928-1935

1902197372

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