The Horror at Red Hook
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"The Horror at Red Hook" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft, but is not generally considered part of the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction. Written on August 1-2, 1925,[1] it was first published in the January 1927 issue of Weird Tales. [2]
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[edit] Inspiration
Lovecraft spelled out his inspiration for "The Horror at Red Hook" in a letter written to fellow writer Clark Ashton Smith:
- The idea that black magic exists in secret today, or that hellish antique rites still exist in obscurity, is one that I have used and shall use again. When you see my new tale "The Horror at Red Hook", you will see what use I make of the idea in connexion with the gangs of young loafers & herds of evil-looking foreigners that one sees everywhere in New York."[1]
Lovecraft had moved to New York to marry Sonia Greene a year earlier, in 1924; his initial infatuation with New York soon soured (an experience fictionalized in his short story "He"), in large part due to Lovecraft's xenophobic attitudes. "Whenever we found ourselves in the racially mixed crowds which characterize New York, Howard would become livid with rage," Greene later wrote. "He seemed almost to lose his mind."[2]
Much of the magical background to the story was lifted from the articles on "Magic" and "Demonology" in the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The use of the Yezidi devil-worshipers as villains seems to have been inspired by E. Hoffmann Price's "The Stranger from Kurdistan".[3]
[edit] Reaction
Lovecraft called "The Horror at Red Hook" "rather long and rambling, and I don't think it is very good".[4] Notably it is also one of the few of his tales set almost completely in an urban setting.
Other critics have tended to agree. Lin Carter called the story "a piece of literary vitriol".[5] Peter Cannon noted that "racism makes a poor premise for a horror story."[6]
[edit] Characters
[edit] Thomas Malone
Thomas F. Malone is an Irish-born New York police detective, "detailed to the Butler Street station in Brooklyn" before going on indefinite medical leave. A "Dublin University man born in a Georgian villa near Phoenix Park," he is said to have "the Celt's far vision of weird and hidden things, but the logician's quick eye for the outwardly unconvincing.... In youth he had felt the hidden beauty and ecstasy of things, and had been a poet; but poverty and sorrow and exile had turned his gaze in darker directions, and he had thrilled at the imputations of evil in the world around." This morbid streak is offset by a "keen logic and a deep sense of humour". He is 42 at the time of "The Horror at Red Hook".
[edit] Robert Suydam
Robert Suydam is "a lettered recluse of ancient Dutch family, possessed originally of barely independent means, and inhabiting the spacious but ill-preserved mansion which his grandfather had built in Flatbush." Seen by most as "a queer, corpulent old fellow whose unkempt white hair, stubbly beard, shiny black clothes, and gold-headed cane earned him an amused glance", Malone knew of him as "a really profound authority on mediaeval superstition." On account of "certain odd changes in his speech and habits; wild references to impending wonders, and unaccountable hauntings of disreputable Brooklyn neighbourhoods," his relatives tried unsuccessfully to have him declared insane. He is about 60 in the time frame of the story.
[edit] Connections to other Cthulhu Mythos Tales
The Horror at Red Hook is not generally considered to be part of the Cthulhu Mythos, lacking many of the elements that characterise it, such as totally alien cults, forbidden tomes, unknown gods and a sense of true "outsideness", all the cults and magic in the book having decidedly real world origins. However Alan Moore used references to "The Horror at Red Hook" for his decidedly Cthulhu Mythos graphic novel and short story "The Courtyard". Lovecraft also recycled the dental identification for the remains of the protagonist for the ending of The Thing on the Doorstep.
Robert Suydam lives in a "lonely house, set back from Martense Street". The Martense Family are the subterranean cannibals in The Lurking Fear.
[edit] References
- Lovecraft, Howard P. [1925] (1999). “The Horror at Red Hook”, S. T. Joshi (ed.): More Annotated Lovecraft, 1st, New York City, NY: Dell. ISBN 0-440-50875-4. With explanatory footnotes.
[edit] Notes
- ^ H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters vol. 2, p. 27; quoted in Peter Cannon, "Introduction", More Annotated Lovecraft, p. 5.
- ^ Lin Carter, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos, p. 45.
- ^ S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, p. 115.
- ^ H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters Vol. 2, p. 20; cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 114.
- ^ Lin Carter, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos, p. 46.
- ^ Cannon, p. 5.