BiblioAddict

On Neil Gaiman, too much H.P. Lovecraft love, monster fish-frog people, and a study in unread source material:

All right now. I like Neil Gaiman. Granted, I’ve only read one of his books – Fragile Things, a collection of short stories – but I enjoyed most, if not all, of those stories. Which is why I feel safe saying something like “I like Neil Gaiman,” and which is also why I’m reading Smoke and Mirrors, another short story collection of his. Unfortunately, I’m not finding this older collection of stories nearly so impressive.

Before I continue, I think now is the time for me to confess that I’ve never read any H.P. Lovecraft. Back in my great horror reading days of middle school and early high school, I may have run across a story or two, but it’s nothing that I remember, at least. Which is kind of sad since H.P. Lovecraft is clearly a major influence on Gaiman. Three out of four of the stories I’ve just read (“Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar,” “Only the End of the World Again,” and “Bay Wolf”) are all H.P. Lovecraft inspired. More specifically, they’re inspired by the Lovecraft story which features the town of Innsmouth populated by fish-frog people.

Now, I gather that if I had actually read the H.P. Lovecraft stories I’d appreciate these references more. As it is, I just find it all kind of annoying. In Gaiman’s stories these monsters aren’t introduced in their own right. They are clearly characters from another story – a story the author supposes I have already read. Meanwhile, since I haven’t read Gaimen’s source material, I’m left to puzzle over references to Dark Ones, frog-like beings from Underneath, the Great Cthulhu, and other creatures coming from the water to gobble up the Earth. This would all be very interesting if I knew what the heck he was talking about, and given that none of Gaiman’s stories bother to explain what he’s talking about it’s all pretty hard to follow.

In the beginning of the book, Gaiman explains that one of the stories (“Shroggoth’s Old Peculiar”) was inspired by a drunken conversation he had with another H.P. Lovecraft lover, and I don’t doubt it either. Trying to make sense of these stories has been very much like trying to make sense of a conversation between two men who have seen the bottom of more than one glass of beer.

I’ll grant that the fact that I haven’t read any H.P. Lovecraft isn’t necessarily Gaiman’s fault. But, well, that doesn’t make these stories any less difficult to follow. Besides, I’m sure these are the same characters featured in Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald,” which was my favorite story out of Fragile Things. So it’s not the creatures themselves that bother me, but the way those creatures are introduced into the story that does. “A Study in Emerald,” with its strange creatures and alternate history was a pleasure to read, while these last few stories in Smoke and Mirrors have been a bore, if not a chore.

Nevertheless, I still like Gaiman. Only, here’s hoping that he lays off the Lovecraft references for a while. At least until after I’ve had time to read up on this Cthulhu Mythos he keeps referencing so often. Clearly the book pictured above is what I really need to be reading.