A great story by Lovecraft, and one of the most intriguing. Detective Malone came out of his investigation better than most of Lovecraft's unfortunate protagonists despite gazing upon a parade of horrors and demonic rituals. And what of the villain? Why did he act against his reanimators? Was that his plan all along or did something change him in that world beyond? Mysterious and impossible to understand, as good horror should be.
I listen to these at work and after all this time on your channel i figured i owed you a comment. Thanks so much for these. Such gems for the imagination
Ironically, these horror stories make my work day pass more easily. And they help add to my yearly count. This is my 100th read this year. The dopamine rush is palpable.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Lovecraft was a product of his time and place in history. Not to mention a very sheltered and isolated childhood. To dismiss his literary work on the grounds of so called controversies concerning his personal views lacks perspective and is in my opinion ones own loss. I understand this seems to be your point as well, my reply was aimed at the conversation in general and not necessarily you personally.
At least H.P. let almost every racial, ethnic, religious and socio-economic group have a dunk in the fault-barrel of critical ethnocentrism. Moderation makes for dull reading.
are you kidding? Did you read Herbert West The Reanimator? The blonde, blue eyed psycho is legitimately the scariest creature in all of the Mythos. And the guy in Rats in the Walls is not too far behind either.
Lovecraft was obviously disturbed and an extreme example, but it’s hard to imagine how horrifying the world must have been for him and other people who shared (and still share) similar views. Everyone brown or different in any way was a dire threat to your existence. The height of insecurity...
First of all- I’m about as liberal as you are an astronaut. Second of all- you, and every other racist dumbfuck, have lived in the privilege of having an entire socioeconomic infrastructure to inflict your violence on every non white, straight, male, and economically privileged person in the entire world. That privilege gets frequently turned around in a particularly toxic and vindictive way, like you’re doing now. You, or whatever institution you hide cowardly behind, inflict life destroying violence on others and then morally implicate them when they even speak about defending themselves. You won’t be able to hide forever! We are boiling over.
@Jeremy Jones because they've been brainwashed to hate themselves, but their inflated egos and delusional sense of moral superiority forbid them from killing themselves, so they just want to kill others who look like them.
I don’t consider myself overly sensitive nor a Lovecraft apologist- the guy was a bit of an elitist xenophobe, no doubt about it; but he was also a fantastic writer and evocative imaginer whose more repugnant views were thankfully tempered by friendships and experience. However, I’ve generally considered the “Horror at Red Hook” to be one of his weaker stories (though a weak Lovecraft story is, admittedly, still pretty good). I know that he wrote this piece while languishing alone in his burglarized New York apartment far from his beloved Rhode Island, and he responded to it... poorly. You can really tell life in Red Hook didn’t agree with him and he grew bitter and withdrawn with all the culture shock and isolation that accompanied it. He relies on tired superstitions and trite stereotypes far too much in this one, but beneath it all there is still the glimmer of cosmic horror that would come to define his work. Overall, I hope people don’t judge old Howard too harshly for this one. It’s by no means a bad piece of literature, but a kind of awkward facsimile of what his work would become; too beset by his own fears and frustrations at the time to really live up to its potential. Thankfully, he gets better both as an author and otherwise!
He talks shit about everyone, specially white people, and some of the "insensitive" language he uses was the parlance of the time and had entirely different meanings. But whatever
Meaning one of two thing. 1) this horror is eternal, an inherent truth of civilization. or 2) H.P. Lovecraft's low key mental illness is a reflection of your own, though you lack the excuse of the zeitgeist and political climate of a century ago
Guys... Can we stop trying to apply politically correct ideologies to works written way before political correctness was ever even thought of? You don't criticize Shakespeare for talking funny do you?
I'm in agreement with you, Nicholas. I know people who refuse to read Lovecraft altogether, because he's regarded as a racist. Honestly, though, it always struck me that he condescended to people more along the lines of culture, than biology. He married a Jew, after all, and regarded her as "well assimilated." In my opinion, he was more an elitist, and less a racist. Neither of those things bothers me, at any rate.
Cero Zenhael nah, Lovecraft was a racist. not just regarded as one. read his private letters, quite the insight. though any one with half a brain could distil that from his stories alone
[How am I going to do this?] Again a big thank you for this upload which kept me company through the lonely wastes of [B]ulgarian AM time. As you may imagine , jogging with a computer , albeit a laptop [my mobile '' app"] takes some doing but I have some friends , some good friends in the form of a pair of thick black suede gloves which have never left my side for many years, winter , or, summer- these enable a sure grip. And my good friends often come to my aid as they did last night. I nearly stumbled over a black cat as I was jogging. You should have heard the din as they squeezed the life out of that poor neglected creature. Thnx! [They couldn't prevent scratching to the upper forearms though!]
You sound like a dangerous person , ..out in the A.Ms Winter and Summer with thick black gloves strangling poor innocent cats? Its a strange thing to confess to on the Internet and I wonder if only the Cats need worry about you? I hope you are just practicing a writing style and you didn't really murder a small defenceless animal. If you did I sincerely hope your scratches were severe and painful.
MORMON (sometimes Mormo) is the Greek goddess of fear and fright. MORONI means “at the river” in the language of the Comoro Islands, whose capital is named Moroni. CUMORAH was originally Camorah, an earlier corruption of Comoro, which is Arabic for “moon”. (The Comoro Islands were known to Joseph Smith Jr through pirate books with which, being a treasure hunter, he was moderately obsessed, similar to how I’m obsessed with exposing Mormonism’s lies. Wanna guess whose side the [real] Gospel is on?)
The racism in these stories takes us into a twisted world told from a perspective that we can understand, but that is distant from us. This makes Lovecraft such an exotic experience, at least to me.
I doubt it, in 1925 when this was written, the ACLU were mostly concerned with trying to keep the black population from literally getting murdered just for existing. Going after a random magazine writer for saying bad words wasnt high on the list.
This has to be one of Lovecraft's most disgustingly racist stories, which is very unfortunate, because the actual writing is massively more interesting than most of his other work.
Thank you Intellectual Exercise for this bounty of audio books! You and your channel are greatly appreciated. A note to those who would apply the nebulous moral and political bellowing of the current hour to the author's work. This is as misguided today as it would have been a century ago. Do not commit the arrogant malefaction of fumbling at Lovecraft's incredible mind with conjecture and half baked theories of personal failings and inner reasoning. One may as well apply demented critical race theory to a radiant sunset, or the idiocy of intersectionality to a darkened foggy bay. Does this work elicit only placation, justification, or parroted academic critique from you? All are callow, vacuous, and wholeheartedly rejected. They inspire only pity from those of us able to set aside whatever whims of the day enjoy temporary exultation, to explore other worlds created by myriad authors years, decades, centuries before our grandfathers walked.
its not really race so much as class that he was afraid of. working class people lived very dull scary lives to him and he saw oceans of them coming more and more every week whenever his wife dragged him to nyc. he thought they were going to be overwhelmed, im not saying it was rational, but it certainly isnt a standard case of racism. it is rooted in mental illness and fear.
So far my least favorite. I don't let the racist stuff bother me since he's been dead for a long time and he is a product of his time, but honestly out of all his stories I've read and heard this wasn't that impactful to me.
Then you didn't understand the horror. I believe the thousand faced moon is the god of all of them Including cthulu. Knowing that makes u kind of think how messed up that sacrifice musted of been...
I think it's because they story is written in the far past tense for much of it (lessening the blow), only with the actual 'alien' events written as near past tense (as if you're transported through time back to the events as the protagonist is reminded of them). Also, even though the events leading up to the climax are indeed strange, they serve more to instil a dread for the end, more than a fear of contemporary events. It is not until the climax when the true 'alien' aspects of the story are written, yet seem as though they were squashed in without enough reasoning behind why the creature is there or why the Kurdish people are there, or indeed worship the monster specifically. It's no Insmouth, no.
You have no idea how many times I’ve fallen asleep to these recordings. Thanks so much for uploading these.
Me too! I thought I was the only one. :)
You aren’t alone lol
Same here 👍 lol
Thank you for posting this as unaltered as possible, it is noticed and appreciated. Even just the simple photo, nothing fancy, adds to the atmosphere
Are most retellings altered from the original text?
A great story by Lovecraft, and one of the most intriguing. Detective Malone came out of his investigation better than most of Lovecraft's unfortunate protagonists despite gazing upon a parade of horrors and demonic rituals. And what of the villain? Why did he act against his reanimators? Was that his plan all along or did something change him in that world beyond? Mysterious and impossible to understand, as good horror should be.
Thanks for visiting and listening. Cheers!
I listen to these at work and after all this time on your channel i figured i owed you a comment. Thanks so much for these. Such gems for the imagination
The pleasure's all mine! Lovecraft's work is something that really intrigues me personally as well. Thanks for being a wonderful audience and cheers!
Ironically, these horror stories make my work day pass more easily. And they help add to my yearly count. This is my 100th read this year. The dopamine rush is palpable.
Incredible story. I really love Lovecraft even with all the controversies surrounding his work he still one of my favourite writers.
Lovecraft was a pure genius!
Moon Door imagine letting controversy and things that may offend someone somewhere impact your ability to experience the world around you.
It shouldn't really be called controversy. You can love Lovecraft's work and still condemn racism. The two are not mutually exclusive.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Lovecraft was a product of his time and place in history. Not to mention a very sheltered and isolated childhood. To dismiss his literary work on the grounds of so called controversies concerning his personal views lacks perspective and is in my opinion ones own loss. I understand this seems to be your point as well, my reply was aimed at the conversation in general and not necessarily you personally.
Makes it even better imo. Ir would not be Lovecraft without it.
Every single word, perfect. As always.
“One does not simply walk into Red Hook!”
At least H.P. let almost every racial, ethnic, religious and socio-economic group have a dunk in the fault-barrel of critical ethnocentrism. Moderation makes for dull reading.
except for aryans, college educated new-englanders, and rich people.
are you kidding? Did you read Herbert West The Reanimator? The blonde, blue eyed psycho is legitimately the scariest creature in all of the Mythos. And the guy in Rats in the Walls is not too far behind either.
@@abcdfg1420 lol grow up crybaby
one of the greatest comments ever on YT. thank you.
the same can be said about HL Mencken
Perfect voice for these gems
Thanks for listening! :)
I can't believe he wrote a story mentioning my home city. I live 20 minutes drive from Phoenix Park, Dublin it is Europe's largest park.
I thought my other message didn't post.
+la dodgers 4 life That's really cool! Thanks for sharing it!
If it's Europe's largest park then why is it surprising that someone wrote about it?
Still amazing !! The nuance and word play !! Exquisite in 2022 cyclopian city !
coming back here after the synagogue tunnels in new york
A blasphemy of one hundred dialects concealed the sky... beautiful.
assailed not concealed.
This narrator... he did his homework. Got the Pascoag, Chepachet and es lasst sich nicht lesen pronounced right!
sadly he stumbled on the tricky Woonsocket.
He thought the situation was bad back then!
Haha, no kidding.
Lol!
Beautiful. Thank you.
Truly chilling, but for once, no bas reliefs!
Thanks for visiting!
HA!
Or CYCLOPEAN MASONRY! HAHA
I cannot hear the words Cyclopean masonry or bas fucking relief without screaming in demoniac terror
Those demoniac, gambrel roofs
This is a masterpiece.
Great story.
Thanks for listening! Cheers!
Lovecraft was obviously disturbed and an extreme example, but it’s hard to imagine how horrifying the world must have been for him and other people who shared (and still share) similar views. Everyone brown or different in any way was a dire threat to your existence. The height of insecurity...
First of all- I’m about as liberal as you are an astronaut.
Second of all- you, and every other racist dumbfuck, have lived in the privilege of having an entire socioeconomic infrastructure to inflict your violence on every non white, straight, male, and economically privileged person in the entire world. That privilege gets frequently turned around in a particularly toxic and vindictive way, like you’re doing now. You, or whatever institution you hide cowardly behind, inflict life destroying violence on others and then morally implicate them when they even speak about defending themselves. You won’t be able to hide forever! We are boiling over.
Freya Butthurt much?
@Jeremy Jones because they've been brainwashed to hate themselves, but their inflated egos and delusional sense of moral superiority forbid them from killing themselves, so they just want to kill others who look like them.
Liverpool gets quite a few mentions in his works too👍👍👍
+Robby Faulkner Thanks for listening!
Amazing,
Thanks for listening! Cheers!
Once one becomes inured to the cringe-y parts, it’s a good story. And I love this reader - he sounds like a news caster, but with more expression.
Excellent
Has this voice actor voice acted any of the godzilla movies I'm sort of curious it's very similar
I don’t consider myself overly sensitive nor a Lovecraft apologist- the guy was a bit of an elitist xenophobe, no doubt about it; but he was also a fantastic writer and evocative imaginer whose more repugnant views were thankfully tempered by friendships and experience. However, I’ve generally considered the “Horror at Red Hook” to be one of his weaker stories (though a weak Lovecraft story is, admittedly, still pretty good).
I know that he wrote this piece while languishing alone in his burglarized New York apartment far from his beloved Rhode Island, and he responded to it... poorly. You can really tell life in Red Hook didn’t agree with him and he grew bitter and withdrawn with all the culture shock and isolation that accompanied it. He relies on tired superstitions and trite stereotypes far too much in this one, but beneath it all there is still the glimmer of cosmic horror that would come to define his work.
Overall, I hope people don’t judge old Howard too harshly for this one. It’s by no means a bad piece of literature, but a kind of awkward facsimile of what his work would become; too beset by his own fears and frustrations at the time to really live up to its potential. Thankfully, he gets better both as an author and otherwise!
He talks shit about everyone, specially white people, and some of the "insensitive" language he uses was the parlance of the time and had entirely different meanings. But whatever
Write what you know... is something I've heard about authors. If so, he nailed it then.
Goes to show how the melting pot scared the absolute shit out of HPL.
And given the world today, he might have been on to something
that machen quote was from the great god pan, wasn't it?
55:05 to 55:24: H.P. Lovecraft giving his impression of Hip Hop.
hehe
21:28 I KNEW IT!
Almost sounds like a horror tale set in nowadays Belgium, Sweden, France or United Kingdom.
Thanks for listening! Cheers!
Meaning one of two thing.
1) this horror is eternal, an inherent truth of civilization.
or
2) H.P. Lovecraft's low key mental illness is a reflection of your own, though you lack the excuse of the zeitgeist and political climate of a century ago
Guys... Can we stop trying to apply politically correct ideologies to works written way before political correctness was ever even thought of? You don't criticize Shakespeare for talking funny do you?
We need to stop applying politically correct ideologies to anytime and everywhere.
I'm in agreement with you, Nicholas. I know people who refuse to read Lovecraft altogether, because he's regarded as a racist.
Honestly, though, it always struck me that he condescended to people more along the lines of culture, than biology. He married a Jew, after all, and regarded her as "well assimilated." In my opinion, he was more an elitist, and less a racist. Neither of those things bothers me, at any rate.
Cero Zenhael
nah, Lovecraft was a racist. not just regarded as one.
read his private letters, quite the insight. though any one with half a brain could distil that from his stories alone
actually, in high school, i sort of did...
He was an exceptional racist even for his time.
Is this abridged if you don’t mind me asking?
(Personal bookmark) 32:14
No, it's unabridged. Thanks for visiting and listening!
[How am I going to do this?]
Again a big thank you for this upload which kept me company through the lonely wastes of [B]ulgarian AM time.
As you may imagine , jogging with a computer , albeit a laptop [my mobile '' app"] takes some doing but I have some friends , some good friends in the form of a pair of thick black suede gloves which have never left my side for many years, winter , or, summer- these enable a sure grip. And my good friends often come to my aid as they did last night. I nearly stumbled over a black cat as I was jogging. You should have heard the din as they squeezed the life out of that poor neglected creature.
Thnx! [They couldn't prevent scratching to the upper forearms though!]
gda295 My pleasure! And thanks for sharing your story! :)
You sound like a dangerous person , ..out in the A.Ms Winter and Summer with thick black gloves strangling poor innocent cats?
Its a strange thing to confess to on the Internet and I wonder if only the Cats need worry about you?
I hope you are just practicing a writing style and you didn't really murder a small defenceless animal. If you did I sincerely hope your scratches were severe and painful.
I am .....better ..... now.
I have changed them for brown .
+Michelle O'Brien Thank you very much! At this moment, there is during the day and night, a dog which will not stop barking, at my new address...
gda295
living in Bulgaria I really hope you are kidding about killing cats.
MORMON (sometimes Mormo) is the Greek goddess of fear and fright.
MORONI means “at the river” in the language of the Comoro Islands, whose capital is named Moroni.
CUMORAH was originally Camorah, an earlier corruption of Comoro, which is Arabic for “moon”. (The Comoro Islands were known to Joseph Smith Jr through pirate books with which, being a treasure hunter, he was moderately obsessed, similar to how I’m obsessed with exposing Mormonism’s lies. Wanna guess whose side the [real] Gospel is on?)
Jesus never existed. :)
I wonder what College he is speaking of. I live 30 minutes walk from Dublin City University, and 30 minutes drive from University college Dublin.
Gregory
Lovecraft wanted to attend Browns University in NY
Jeffrey314159 brown is in providence Rhode Island
Filly Phunk Thank you of informing me of that. Makes sense. Maybe I was thinking of King's fictional Horlicks Univ.
5:00
who is the narrator?
Stormcaller99 - Gordon Gould
HP Lovecraft - why use one word when 134,672 words will do? 😁
Who is this narrator??? He's great
Gordon Gould
DD?
Can someone explain to me what happened in this story I’m lost
Honestly it’s one of his worst works. The dude pretty much loses his mind and that’s it
The racism in these stories takes us into a twisted world told from a perspective that we can understand, but that is distant from us. This makes Lovecraft such an exotic experience, at least to me.
This is all so anti-PC, so anti-diversity, so anti-immigrant - - no doubt the ADL and ACLU had this author, HP Lovecraft, on their hit list.
I doubt it, in 1925 when this was written, the ACLU were mostly concerned with trying to keep the black population from literally getting murdered just for existing. Going after a random magazine writer for saying bad words wasnt high on the list.
post malone
abc dfg lol thats what I was thinking
Pre malone
More like post traumatic stress disorder malone
Lol
This has to be one of Lovecraft's most disgustingly racist stories, which is very unfortunate, because the actual writing is massively more interesting than most of his other work.
Bruh i was raised in Red Hook!
nah its kinda boring there
Surely you know enough then.
IV. 21:41
Thanks for visiting and listening! Cheers!
Cheers to you my friend I have been on this Lovecraft journey for some time and your channel had been a big part of it.
I'm on the same journey for years and it seems like I cannot escape from the dream-domain of Lovecraft. It's so addicting in a strange way. :)
Thank you Intellectual Exercise for this bounty of audio books! You and your channel are greatly appreciated.
A note to those who would apply the nebulous moral and political bellowing of the current hour to the author's work. This is as misguided today as it would have been a century ago. Do not commit the arrogant malefaction of fumbling at Lovecraft's incredible mind with conjecture and half baked theories of personal failings and inner reasoning. One may as well apply demented critical race theory to a radiant sunset, or the idiocy of intersectionality to a darkened foggy bay. Does this work elicit only placation, justification, or parroted academic critique from you? All are callow, vacuous, and wholeheartedly rejected. They inspire only pity from those of us able to set aside whatever whims of the day enjoy temporary exultation, to explore other worlds created by myriad authors years, decades, centuries before our grandfathers walked.
virgin
My fuck stop eating thesaurus’s
(: Sounds like Stargate :)
Thanks for listening!
51:53 awkward to just put in a foreign language with no English translation. H.P. should have at least added "which, translated, means....."
Wow, this is really racist! But damn the guy can write.
Thanks for listening! Cheers!
its not really race so much as class that he was afraid of. working class people lived very dull scary lives to him and he saw oceans of them coming more and more every week whenever his wife dragged him to nyc. he thought they were going to be overwhelmed, im not saying it was rational, but it certainly isnt a standard case of racism. it is rooted in mental illness and fear.
So far my least favorite. I don't let the racist stuff bother me since he's been dead for a long time and he is a product of his time, but honestly out of all his stories I've read and heard this wasn't that impactful to me.
Thanks for your feedback. Yes, this story is not his best. Anyway, have a great weekend!
Then you didn't understand the horror. I believe the thousand faced moon is the god of all of them Including cthulu. Knowing that makes u kind of think how messed up that sacrifice musted of been...
Ah'At Bishokuya Ah, the classic “you didn’t like it because you didn’t get it” argument, the last refuge of the intellectually insecure
@@MrTahabk Actually asathoth is the god of them. the universe itself is his dream
I think it's because they story is written in the far past tense for much of it (lessening the blow), only with the actual 'alien' events written as near past tense (as if you're transported through time back to the events as the protagonist is reminded of them). Also, even though the events leading up to the climax are indeed strange, they serve more to instil a dread for the end, more than a fear of contemporary events. It is not until the climax when the true 'alien' aspects of the story are written, yet seem as though they were squashed in without enough reasoning behind why the creature is there or why the Kurdish people are there, or indeed worship the monster specifically. It's no Insmouth, no.