Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy by Harman Graham

Author:Harman, Graham [Harman, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: antique
Published: 2012-12-16T19:17:42+00:00

At the Mountains of Madness

This story was written in early 1931, only to be rejected by the previously receptive Weird Tales. It was finally published in 1936 by Astounding Stories, in serial form, so that Lovecraft did at least live to see it in print. With its bleak Antarctic setting and catalog of scientifically described horrors, it is the favorite Lovecraft story of many readers. It would easily rank as my favorite as well, if not that the entire second half of the story seems like a very bad idea. In my view, the story should have ended with Dyer and Danforth witnessing the Cyclopean city from the air and returning to the campsite in a state of horror and hysteria. The final sixty pages of city exploration undermine the city’s innate architectural horror by bringing it too close, and they also spiral into an overly detailed historical account of the creatures that sounds too much like the backstory for someone’s role-playing game campaign. The final lesson of the urban exploration seems to be that the Elder Things are more like us than we might have expected. They too have a historical cycle of flourishing and decadence, and they too can be the victims of murder. But all of these details undermine Lovecraft’s primary gift, which is to poise his creatures forever on the very brink of knowability.

The first half of the story, by contrast, is perhaps the most brilliant thing Lovecraft ever wrote. A team of Miskatonic University professors and graduate students is assembled for an Antarctic expedition. An ingenious drill invented by Professor Pabodie of the Geology Department allows for deeper borings than on previous Antarctic expeditions. Professor Lake (Biology) soon turns almost mutinous after discovering what he believes to be fossils of strange footprints, though expedition commander Professor Dyer (Geology) dismisses them as normal markings not unlike others already known to his discipline. Lake asserts his instincts against Dyer’s reservations, and takes a side-expedition by aircraft hundreds of miles from the main camp. His gamble initially pays off in a series of staggering scientific discoveries. Among other things, he finds a mountain range much higher than the Himalayas. But even more important is a wondrous cache of fossils from an impossibly early date, including a number of giant, barrel-shaped things that Lake takes to be highly advanced marine radiata. These discoveries are dramatically relayed in a series of radio conversations between the three separate camps of the expedition. Lake is astonished, excited, and perhaps a bit alarmed to discover that the barrel-shaped organisms, which seem to lie midway between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, are what made the strange footprints discovered earlier in the story. The specimens are brought into camp despite the ferocious barking of the dogs, who cannot stand the fossils (always a bad sign in a Lovecraft story). A terrible storm then arises, accompanied by a long period of radio silence. The remaining team with Dyer decides to investigate the silence, and flies to the camp of Professor Lake.

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