A Monster for Many

In the 1990s, Robert H. Waugh-now Emeritus Professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz-emerged as one of the most profound and learned commentators on H. P. Lovecraft. He has brought to the study of the Providence writer a deep knowledge of literature in English, French, Latin, and other languages, and a sensitivity to the complex nuances found in Lovecraft's literary work.

 

This third volume of his essays continues the pattern of his earlier books, The Monster in the Mirror and A Monster of Voices. Here we have studies of Lovecraft's use of the imagery of wells in "The Colour out of Space"; the cosmic history of alien species in At the Mountains of Madness and "The Shadow out of Time"; the role that the fictional Miskatonic University plays in Lovecraft's fiction; and the influence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on several Lovecraft tales.

 

Other essays discuss Lovecraft's influence on such science fiction writers as Arthur C. Clarke, Fritz Leiber, and Philip K. Dick, as well as such understudied tales as "Cool Air" and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. And Waugh's long rumination about Lovecraft's response to the Nobel Prize winners of his day displays to the full the author's wide-ranging expertise on world literature.

 

Robert H. Waugh continues to display a mastery of Lovecraft's life, work, and thought that makes every one of his essays a feast for the mind.