I’m now on Lovecraft story number 9! We have gone from delightful revenge stories featuring fishy-people and cats. Our new story is about dark, unfathomable cosmic horror. Perfect.
Our main character, we’ll call him Z, tells us right from the beginning that he is alone and the world is lost. Then he takes us back a few months.
Z lives in a time of political chaos, turbulence, with pale-faced worried people. Also the seasons are out of whack and autumn just drags on. Sounds like our actual reality!
Into this comes Nyarlathotep, a person from Egypt who apparently actually is from 27 centuries ago and who has talked with space aliens. Nobody seems to worry too much about this. In fact, Nyarlathotep is researching modern technology, building cool machinery (with space alien knowledge?) and holding public seminars about electricity and the future. Unfortunately, everyone who goes to hear him becomes really upset about the state of the world.
Again, seems very familiar.
Of course Egypt isn’t ‘civilized’. Nyarlathotep has to come to the US before he is in ‘civilization’.
So Z hears about all of this. And then Nyarlathotep comes to Z’s city – let’s say New York City – and holds a seminar there. Z of course goes. It seems just like static electricity, but Nyarlathotep of course gets grumpy about this and kicks everyone out into the streets.
And suddenly it’s Stranger Things and they are in the Upside Down. Everything is the same – but decayed. Tram-cars are fallen over and collapsed. The world has gone to kibble (thanks Philip K Dick). And then the people start vanishing.
The final paragraph is really a work of beauty. This is where Lovecraft shines. The shadow writhing in hands that are not hands. The screamingly sentient but dumbly delirious. The maddening drums and whining flutes. This is much more ‘unsettled’ than his previous worlds.
But what is Lovecraft’s hatred of imperfect dancing? Once again we have ‘slow awkward absurd’ dancing as if this is the ultimate offense against the universe. Dance as if nobody is watching!!
I enjoy this one a lot. Sure, nothing much ‘happens’ except Nyarlathotep pulling the world down into hopeless chaos. It’s well written, though.
Read Nyarlathotep here –
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/n.aspx
My video discussion of Nyarlathotep is here –