The Annotated HP Lovecraft, the new collection edited and annotated by
Leslie Klinger, follows closely in line with his previous volumes,
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and
The New Annotated Dracula. I have both the Annotated Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories, and the annotated Dracula, and they are both attractive and useful additions to my library (I've yet to check out the Annotated Sandman - it's hard to justify buying a third copy of that series). I'm thrilled that they've decided to release a Lovecraft edition.
Klinger's Treatment of Lovecraft
Klinger thankfully does not fall into the trap that many media depictions of Lovecraft do in
The Annotated HP Lovecraft - there is this repetitive picture of Lovecraft as a recluse, and that Lovecraft was a terrible writer.
Lovecraft plainly wasn't particularly reclusive, except for a period in his youth. His prose may not be to everyone's taste. Certainly, some of his earlier stories are a bit florid - but I believe that by the end of his career, he had unarguably demonstrated a real talent as a storyteller and as a stylist.
Klinger thankfully also does not gloss over Lovecraft's racism. Look, I know some people are tired of hearing about that, but the guy was pretty racist. It informed his work and his life in a profound way, and cannot be glossed over or swept away.
The Book
The annotations are insightful and interesting. There are lots of great full color illustrations, and amazingly, full reproductions of the original Weird Tales art where applicable.
The story selection of
The Annotated HP Lovecraft is interesting. Klinger made the point of selecting only the so-called "Arkham Cycle," which essentially means stories that directly tie into the Cthulhu Mythos. This makes for a weird book - less popular stories like "The Nameless City," "The Unnameable," and "The Statement of Randolph Carter" are included, while "The Outsider" and "Rats in the Walls" are not.
The Nerd's Literary Canon
It is interesting to think that the RPG community bears some responsibility for the rediscovery of HP Lovecraft as a piece of the literary canon. Klinger, as does most Lovecraft criticism, makes passing reference to the popularity of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, but honestly, I think that it's pretty awesome that Call of Cthulhu gamers and schlock horror movies like Reanimator shaped culture-at-large in such a subtle way so that somehow twenty years later we have a Library of America HP Lovecraft, and books like this one.
The New Annotated HP Lovecraft is available now on Amazon.com
