Reading Rainbow - Lovecraft Reborned!

For those of you looking for a way to turn your brain off over the break (and I mean TOTALLY off), boy do I have a pick for you. In a vindication of nearly 15 years of sweaty adolescent obsession on my part, the Library of America has published a volume collecting about half of H.P. Lovecraft's work. Luc Sante has written a (very cautious, but relatively positive) review of it at the NY Review of Books.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19454

But ultimately, recognition from the literary establishment is of secondary importance. What matters is that Lovecraft is the ultimate nerd's horror writer. As a matter of fact, he's a poststructuralist of sorts - all of the worst things in his stories happen because of books. Libraries and Universities are the most dangerous places on the face of the earth (followed closely by the Antarctic). Books that should never be read are used to summon from the forgotten depths creatures who can never die, and who constitute the inevitable, inescapable doom of humanity - in my darkest hours, I'd call that a rather good metaphor for culture. Ironically enough, Lovecraft was himself a pretty dire racist, and didn't fail to pass it on in his own work.

If Burroughs thought language was a virus, Lovecraft thinks it's an interplanetary octopoid demigod determined to eat your brain, followed by the rest of you. Grab it and curl up under the covers with a flashlight. CTHULHU WAITS!

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookSearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&isbn=1931082723