Weird Fiction discussion

"In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and a faint, distant baying as of some gigantic hound. It is not dream—it is not, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. St. John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the same way. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch phantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation."

Thus we have the first paragraph of the latest Lovecraft offering before our purview. Blowing out one's brains is preferable to being mangled? How can that be!? Come read the rest of this tantalizing short story with us, the Lovecraft Group of Weird Fiction, as we find out this June!

This story continues our chronological (in terms of writing, not publishment) survey of H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. Written in September 1922 and published in the February 1924 issue of Weird Tales, it contains the first mention of Lovecraft's fictional text, the Necronomicon.

Though Lovecraft chose "The Hound" as one of the five stories he initially submitted to Weird Tales, his main professional outlet, he later dismissed it as "a dead dog" and "a piece of junk," proving we can be our own harshest critic. Do you agree with Lovecraft's assessment? Why or why not?

I read this and then listened to episode 29 of "The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast", which is about this story. They mentioned that dismissal, and that he might have had "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in mind when writing it. Which I guess is somewhat obvious. I really liked it, though. A neat little horror story with stylish prose.

Sure, it's basically about two bored men messing about, but I think it's cool that they were very particular about the atmosphere when doing their recreational activities, as if they made it an artform. The rest is fairly downtrodden genre wise and wouldn't have been as enjoyable if it hadn't been for the execution.

I recently watched the Basil Rathbone movie, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and enjoyed it. The film came out a few years after Lovecraft's death. So if Lovecraft was acquainted with the story there's no doubt it was from having read it. I can see some similarities. I bet Lovecraft had read it.

I thought Lovecraft's story okay to read, nothing special. Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... This one might be better as an audio "read".

This was creepy and doesn't bear any ressemblance to the other dream stories.
Don't go robbing graves if you want to sleep soundly at night!