Weird Fiction discussion

To start our discussion off this month I thought I would reprint a comment of mine from July 20, 2020 introducing the August 2020 group read. This month we finally get to that short story of Lovecraft's I then mentioned (but never reread). Care to join?

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August's group read "winner" is A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben. I am really excited about this selection. Carrie Laben is an up-and-coming Weird and also Horror writer. Not famous enough yet to have her own Wikipedia page, she does have her own website (https://carrielaben.com/). According to her isfdb page (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1...), over the past 13 years Laben has published no less than fifteen short stories, but this is her first published novel. I have never read a word by Carrie Laben. Assuming you have not as well, this will be all of our first experiences with this exciting new novelist.

I chose to nominate this novel mostly because it builds, so I read, on one of my favorite Lovecraft short stories. I skimmed a review of Laben's novel stating it was not necessary to have read the Lovecraft short story before reading her work, but that doing so would enhance the pleasure. I'm all about enhanced pleasure, so I'm going to reread the short story. It's been years.

H. P. Lovecraft's short story is titled "The Thing on the Doorstep." Check out this first sentence--one of my favorites of all times: "It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer." If you can resist reading now, I'm truly amazed. I located a copy of this short story for your reading pleasure: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/...

August is going to be a good month!

Well, that story was much better than I was expecting. Four stars! It only avoids five because I feel in general that Lovecraft keeps too great a distance between what he writes about and the narrative perspective he uses to write it. I can't believe this story received any negative reviews. Only those not liking Lovecraft to begin with could find something to object to in this story.

My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Don't read the one-sentence spoiler if you know little of this story's plot and plan to read it.

I've just finished my reread of story and enjoyed the references to Innsmouth, but overall I found this to be a really sad story-sad and creepy.

I agree. In fact, I find almost all stories about possession disturbing and disquieting, maybe even sad, as you put it.

It's not that I have a literal belief in possession as an actual phenomenon. But I do believe in it as far as what many people are trying to do to others in figurative terms. For example, spousal or child abuse, observations lead me to conclude, usually stem from a motivation of one family member trying to control another in order to receive some perceived benefit they can't otherwise obtain. It's sad when that strategy succeeds because of the victim's loss of personal freedom, and when it doesn't, of course, due to the violence inflicted. It also makes me sad to see politicians trying to control people (limit their freedom) by unnecessarily passing laws in order to take away rights they previously enjoyed, as is happening more and more often of late in the USA. Again, a loss of freedom to make personal choices is the result. It seems to me that these are both prevalent examples of non-literal forms of attempted possession. Therefore, possession stories have real-world relevance even if they're entirely fictional.