[.ca] The Road to Madness (ISBN 0345384229)

From Amazon.com:
"There is a melancholy, operatic grandeur in Lovecraft's most passionate work," writes Joyce Carol Oates in The New York Review of Books, "... a curious elegiac poetry of unspeakable loss, of adolescent despair, and an existential loneliness so pervasive that it lingers in the reader's memory, like a dream, long after the rudiments of Lovecraftian plot have faded." Del Rey has reprinted Lovecraft's stories in three large-format paperbacks. This third volume collects one poem, one story fragment, and 26 tales not included in the first two, including "Herbert West--Reanimator," "The Lurking Fear," "Dagon," "The Unnameable," and the classic short novel "At the Mountains of Madness." Introduction by Barbara Hambly. Beautiful cover art by surrealist John Jude Palencar.

The greatest author of all time!:
Most people thinks that a man with a knife chasing teenagers is scary. This book proves them wrong! All of these stories were written back in the 1920s, but just because they're old doesn't mean they're not scary. His stories tell of civilizations that existed before man and creatures that drive people insane. They tell of aliens that have supernatural qualities and creatures that are really evil. His stories are almost believable. Some people actually believed his stories! I think it's because his ideas and writing are so perfect. You won't find a bad story in this book. It's worth the price.

Lovecraft is the Greatest Gothic Writer of All Time:
Here you have it! The lot of the H.P. Lovecraft stories that were later adapted into horror films. As such, it is the most interesting of the series of 3 books by Del Ray. The movies were liberal adaptions, as the stories were short and left most to the imagination. This book in particular is key to horror fans; no collector or afficienado should be without this. You will be a lot better person after reading this than before. Sit back and enjoy.

Horrors!:
My first experience with Lovecraft was reading "The Lurking Fear" and "The Outsider". His descriptions, his prose, his gift for getting even the least creative reader inside his stories...it's pure genius. These tales are guaranteed to send a chill down your spine. Whether a fan of the genre or not, one cannot fal to appreciate his skill at vividly creating an aura of creepiness no other modern author has been able to duplicate.

Absolutely stunning! The best horror writing I've ever read.:
My original review for "The Transition of H.P. Lovecraft: The Road to Madness" was posted on January 10th 1999. The title and review was written as follows: Title: A true master of the macabre. Review: My only complaint about the writings of H.P. Lovecraft would be that many of his stories are of a similar nature and theme. Irregardless of this I found most of his stories to be extremely impressive works of fantasy and horror. H.P. Lovecraft is a true past master. If you like anything that has ever dealt with horror, fantasy, or sci-fi, then you would be doing yourself a great disservice to not read a collection of Lovecraft stories at least once in your life. I was very, very impressed by my first encounter with Lovecraft's work. I will read more of his material before my life is over. End of original review. I am very pleased with my original review and have re-reviewed it to properly put it under my correct name and Amazon.com identity. The only thing new that I would like to add to this re-review would be this: the last story in this collection is called "At The Mountains of Madness." This story is hands down the best horror story I have ever read in my entire life. Nothing I have read since has equaled it, and nothing ever will. I consider it a profound pleasure that back in 1999 I read a horror story that will stand for the rest of my life as the greatest horror story I have ever read.

"IA, Cthulhu!", or, Never look a gift Shoggoth in the Mouth:
Literary theorists swear up and down to their youthful, naive charges that there are only three conflicts in fiction: Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Himself. Providence recluse and Grandmaster of Horror H.P. Lovecraft, while proving handy at mastering all three of the aforementioned timeless old chestnuts, suggests there is a fourth category: Man versus Thing. Any connoiseur of the frenzied scribblings of old Adbul Al-Hazred in the Necronomicon will find this second Del Rey collection indispensable as 1) a grimoire chock-full of searingly useful material on the recondite pursuits of those lovable, tentacled beings we know and love as the Elder Gods---mind your manners, sonny boy, they were devouring souls and mastering the Time-Space Quanitplex back when your ancestors were hobnobbing with euglena and paramecium; and 2)Scaring yourself silly. Man versus Thing, indeed. Lovecraft was a God among insects, a true literary Giant in the Earth, and the potent, vicious, soul-unhinging madness flowing from his deliciously warped mind is astonishing. Lovecraft took the great disillusionment that stemmed from the Great War and ratcheted it up to the next step, pounding the final nail in the coffin of scientific positivism, and his horror is Cosmic; therein lies his peculiar brilliance. Lovecraft is more than purpled prose and tentacles, in that he has created a world peopled with bloodless, bookish men of science and set them up against uncaring stellar horrors, leaving them with no appeal to God or Goodness. The crucifix won't help you against the horror bubbling out of *that* particular crypt, my good man! In Lovecraftian fiction, Mankind thinks that by harnessing the marvels of science and high technology, He will improve himself and advance the cause and course of civilization. Lovecraft knew better. In the Lovecraftian universe , Man is still a primitive, shambling neanderthal in trousers who lives in a dark, slimy, relatively unexplored cave. Science is a guttering tallow candle he holds before him in his trembling hand, throwing light on bulbous, slithering neighbors we had previously only dimly imagined. And that's the *good* news. The bad news is that Man's newfound, eldritch buddies are now awfully interested in him. And hungry. The supreme horror discovered by Lovecraftian heroes throughout the stories here---from the refugee from a German U-Boat in "The Temple", to the curious scholar who fumbles with a singularly wrong Device (shades of the Lament Configuration, possibly?), to the hapless spaceman trapped "In the Walls of Eryx"---all of them learn that Science is no friend, and Good and Evil are remote and relative terms on this tepid, livid blue-green orb hurled through cold and unblinkingly alien galaxies. The stories collected in "The Road to Madness" offer a spyglass into Lovecraft's literary development, but that's less interesting than the gleefully ghoulish, elegant sliminess of some of the ghastly tales offered here like gemstones in the darkness: "Cool Air", "He" and "The Terrible Old Man" chronicle the dangers of befriending or robbing antique old gentlemen in Yankee alleys or Paris garrets; "The Unnameable" is a tasty little ghoul's kiss in a graveyard in which Lovecraft taunts the typical critical assessment of his prose style; "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" serves as a clever riff on the Strange Travelogue Tale, ghost-written for illusionist Harry Houdini. But these tales, tasty as they are, are but molehills to the mountains offered up by the three jewels in this Lovecraftian crown. "At the Mountains of Madness" is surely Lovecraft's masterwork, chronicling forgotten horrors that threaten the sanity of an Arctic expedition---and possibly the world. "Herbert West: Re-animator" offers an epic account of what some good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity and a syringe of corpse-reviving re-agent can accomplish. "The Horror at Red Hook", a jaunt into some of Brooklyn's seamier quarters, advances a sound argument for urban renewal if ever there was one. Road to madness? Quite possibly. Road to soul-crushing terror and tentacled nightmares? Absolutely. Enjoy.