First Response to H P Lovecraft’s The Outsider

This is my initial thoughts on the story, nothing too in depth. Warning, big spoiler, if you want to read the story do that first. It's here.

The beginning of this story reminded me somewhat of Gormenghast but with a more literal take on the idea of Titus Alone. Its mouldy, decaying castle is viscerally described and the infinite loneliness of the narrator is palpable. The nature of this castle with its immense forest is kept a mystery, but there is a hint that not all is as described when we're told the narrator believed himself young because he remembered so little. A failed memory and a life in a place that seems to exist outside the real world.

Only when the escape is made – and leads not to a high tower above the forest, but ground level in an aged churchyard does the mystery of the castle, a veritable crypt, become clear. From there it’s clear what must happen, the narrator must learn it is a dead thing crawled up from its grave, but Lovecraft spins the discovery out to full effect in both horror and sympathy.

The use of nepenthe to erase the sorrow through forgetfulness and allow the ghoul to be just that in some sense breaks the sympathy we might feel for it, but at the same time gives rise to an explanation behind the raison d’être of ghouls and ghosts everywhere. The horror, the otherness and extreme loneliness of their existence drives them to flee the light and take delight in scaring the living who shun them.

Calling the story the Outsider and giving the reader an attachment to the ghoul before revealing its nature allows Lovecraft to make the connection – is this a ghoul or a man shunned for being different? Obviously in the story it is a genuine undead being, but the metaphor is carefully woven so the simple horror of the story is twisted to an analogy of human existence and the loneliness of the ‘other’.

Until next time, keep dreaming!

Goals and Plans

So I have a couple of plans in mind and I'm going to commit them to this blog to make sure I stick with them. There's one about my playwrighting and one about The Scarlet Ring.

The thing with the playwrighting is I did actually finish two one-act pieces this year and since then both have sat on my computer not bothering anyone or finding out if they're any good - let alone trying to come to life on the stage. So the plan is a play reading picnic in the park.

People will gather, some volunteering to read, others just coming to enjoy the event and join the discussion, then while a picnic lunch is eaten the two plays will be read out. Then as we digest the food everyone who wants to can give some feedback on the plays. That should at least give me the basis for a second draft. That's the plan. A date will be set soon and people will be invited via Facebook, so if you're interested watch that space. It'll be in Sydney in case you're not.

Plan two. I've decided to give NaNoWriMo a go this year. That's the National Novel Writing Month, where you sign up and challenge yourself to write 50,000 words of a novel in November. The idea is to start a new novel, I don't want to do that but I do want to face the challenge properly. Bit of an issue when I've already started but I have a plan.

Before this came up I had divided The Scarlet Ring into three parts (not the trilogy but three sections of book one). So the plan is to finish part one before November and do parts two and three as the challenge.