How could it be? This volume of H.P. Lovecraft's collected stories--picked up at this year's Printers Row Lit Fest--weighs several pounds, and just lifting it is something of a chore, much less carrying it around in my backpack five days a week.
Still, it is something I'm plowing through at home, and I have been since the middle of last month.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, RI on August 20, 1890. He died on the Ides of March, 1937.
In between? He wrote some of the most horrific fiction ever committed to paper.
Several of his stories have been adapted for the big screen and the small, with the best adaptations happening during the three-season run of Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Especially good were "Pickman's Model" with Bradford Dillman as a tortured artist working desperately to hide the inspirations for his hideous paintings, and "Cool Air" starring Henry Darrow as a man whose room must be kept at ice-cold temperatures...or else.
At the movie houses, Lovecraft loomed large, especially in the 1960s and 1970s with movies like The Haunted Palace starring Vincent Price and Debra Paget (mmm...Debra Paget...wait, what were we talking about again? Oh, right...Lovecraft), Die, Monster, Die starring Boris Karloff and Nick Adams, and The Dunwich Horror starring Dean Stockwell.
Lovecraft also provided ample inspiration for comic book creators like Mike Mignola, whose Hellboy often encounters monsters and "elder gods" from Lovecraft's writings.
Now, you must excuse me--I have about 600 pages to go...
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