Maurizio Bianco từ Sularbaşı/Erzincan, Turkey

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11/24/2024

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Maurizio Bianco Sách lại (10)

2018-05-23 11:30

Sáo Trúc 6 Lỗ Căn Bản & Nâng Cao (Kèm CD) Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

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It hadn’t been a real long while since I last read Lovecraft but I attacked Bloodcurdling Tales with relish. I prefer Lovecraft’s weird tales to his dream quest stuff and that’s what this one’s all about. This book is the perfect introduction to Lovecraft for the newcomer and a great way to revisit his work for the longtime fan. Many of the classics are here including some of my favorites like “Pickman’s Model,” “Dreams In The Witch House” and “In The Vault.” “The Call Of Cthulhu,” and other stories that fell into what was later called the “Cthulhu Mythos” are in abundance as well as a few that are just good old horror stories. This Del Rey volume is one of the first Lovecraft collections I ever read. I don’t know how old I was at the time. I vividly recall the stories having a fairly profound effect on me, or the writing, or the world Lovercraft’s character’s existed in, or something. It resonated pretty heavily in my psyche, for whatever reason, for better or for worse. What I don’t recall was what my reaction was to Lovecraft’s racism. I don’t remember thinking anything about it. Reading it now, it must have been obvious. I mean, first story, “Rats In The Walls,” bang, there it is. The protagonist’s cat’s name is a racial slur, this cat named after Lovercraft’s own beloved cat. I know I was aware of racism and bigotry and that I must have had some kind of reaction to this at the time but I can’t remember. In recent memory, I’ve noticed the racism in the writing of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling. Few of these authors’ fans seem eager to engage in a dialogue about the issue, let alone comment on it. Probably the most thorough and accurate analysis I’ve read is this one by Bruce Lord: http://www.contrasoma.com/writing/lov... In addition to Lovecraft's racism, this article addresses his fear of sex and women, so it’s pretty interesting, if fairly dry. There is also a great Revolution Science Fiction water cooler on Lovecraft and racism here: http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.p... The best quote I gleaned from that was: “Does the text of Lovecraft’s stories contain racism and is it of the type and/or frequency that would make me hesitate to recommend it to friends, or to hand a Lovecraft anthology to teenagers without also including a civics lesson? If so, that’s damned important stuff to talk about. Beyond that, you’re just wagging your finger at a dead guy.” -Jason Myers And enough on that topic. Because I hadn’t read so many of these stories in such a long time, I did pick up on things I’m sure I didn’t as a kid. The fact that Pluto had just been discovered lead the science and astronomy loving Lovecraft to incorporate the planet as Yuggoth, way station to ancient evil. I have such a poor grasp on the chronology of events, so it’s interesting to see how a scientific discovery of Lovercraft’s time entered his fiction. I loved the “handy three-in-one device including a screw-driver which I kept on my key-ring” from “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” I didn’t even know they HAD those in the 20’s! Also, devil worship! I grew up with the whole devil worship thing going on, talk show hosts talking about which bands were satanic, KISS supposedly standing for Knights In Satan’s Service, rumors of local locations where Satanic rituals were rumored to take place. Reading Lovecraft’s descriptions of depraved devil worshippers got me wondering, “When did it all begin?” It seems to have existed at least as far back as the 18th century, though the earliest references may have come from Christians accusing pagans of worshipping the devil during their ancestral rites. I like to think that somebody, one day, said, “Yeah, okay, Satan, right, yep, I worship him,” y’know, that first drop, the ripples of which continue to disturb modern society to this day. And what about this word, “cyclopean?” What does it really mean? Lovecraft uses it to mean “enormous” or something to that effect. Large beyond human comprehension. I thought the word was a Lovercraft invention but, as it turns out, it’s a real word! According to Wikipedia, “The term comes from the belief of classical Greeks that only the mythical Cyclopes had the strength to move the enormous boulders that made up the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. Pliny’s Natural History reported the tradition attributed to Aristotle, that the Cyclopes were the inventors of masonry towers, giving rise to the designation Cyclopean." Something that one can glean and appreciate from these stories is the existence and effect of the “Lovecraft Circle,” a select group of pulp writers who became pen pals and borrowed ideas from one another. Robert E. Howard gets a nod in “The Shadow Out Of Time” when Lovecraft sites “Crom-Ya, a Cimmerian chieftan of 15,000 B.C.” Clark Ashton Smith becomes the dark sorcerer, Klarkash-Ton, in “The Whisperer In Darkness.” Robert Bloch gets a shout in the form of protagonist, Robert Blake in “The Haunter Of The Dark,” which Lovecraft dedicated to him. It was from Reading Howard and Lovecraft that I learned of the “Lovecraft Circle” and began to dele into the writing of the other authors. I think that’s cool, and fun and I like it. I read another Del Rey collection, Dreams Of Terror And Death, not so long ago. That was published thirteen years after Bloodcurdling Tales but I find it questionable that “Pickman’s Model,” “The Silver Key” and “Dreams In The Witch House” appear in both collections. Put them in one or the other, select a few more stories and be done with it. Is that not the obvious choice? It seems Del Rey has done it again with their Robert E. Howard collections. It’s no egregious crime but it is a shame other stories were not included instead of repeats. Robert Bloch’s introduction is excellent. There’s a great quote that provides and interesting take on modern horror writers and film makers: “The source of a writer’s personal fantasies is to a great extent colored by what he reads or views during his impressionable early years. Today’s fictioneers and filmmakers often come late to an acquaintance with literary traditions. Their youthful influences were often the science fiction films and comic books of the fifties and sixties. As a result, a great deal of what they present as horror relies on crude and explicit violence. Dwelling on gruesome detail in print and utilizing special effects for shock on the screen, they opt for the easy out of evoking nausea and revulsion instead of genuine fear. Even their lighter efforts, involving the renascence of “super-heroes,” betray an intellectual dependency on the comics of their childhood. As such, their efforts find greater favor with juvenile audiences of today.” You change a few words and that becomes what I see as a fairly accurate indictment of modern music, as well, never mind this was written around 1982. If you wanna’ read some Lovecraft, you can’t go wrong with Bloodcurdling Tales. Highly recommended.

Người đọc Maurizio Bianco từ Sularbaşı/Erzincan, Turkey

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.