Cthulhu You Knew

Humans tend to be visually oriented.Arresting images stop us cold, causing us to focus on what we’re seeing.As a tween I could be transported by large, lavishly illustrated, full-color books of other worlds.While these went the way of Bradbury, I still sometimes recollect scenes that stopped me in my young tracks, making my juvenile mind wonder, what if…?As an adult I realize “coffee table” books are heavy and a pain when you’re moving.Printed on specialized paper, they have more heft than your mass-market paperback, or even most academic tomes.  Nevertheless, Gothic Dreams Cthulhu was a book that carried me, like a time-machine, back to my younger years.Unlike in those days, however, I read the text as well as lingered over the images.And I wondered about Cthulhu.

You see, I didn’t know about Lovecraft as a child.The only reading regularly done in my family was Bible-oriented.I discovered science fiction and gothic literature as a tween and, living in a small town, had no one to guide me in my choices.Rouseville (the town pictured in the background on this website) had no public library.My reading was left to my own, uninformed devices.I discovered Cthulhu through my long fascination with Dagon.I’d pitched Dagon as my dissertation topic, but settled on Asherah instead.While teaching religion at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, I discovered Lovecraft, and Cthulhu, through Dagon.

Gordon Kerr, the author of Gothic Dreams Cthulhu, might be forgiven his hyperbole about H. P. Lovecraft.Lovecraft was not a great writer—that’s not intended as any kind of slight, I hasten to add.Classically, however, he didn’t have the level of literary finesse of Edgar Allan Poe, for example.Still, Lovecraft created credible worlds.His was a life of imagination—one might almost say divinity.He was a creator.Cthulhu has become a cultural icon.With the magic of the internet bringing a writer still obscure to international attention, many people who never read horror fantasy nevertheless know who Cthulhu is.Or they think they do.As Kerr explains, the descriptions by Lovecraft himself are spare, thus the variety of ideas represented in the delicious artwork on every page of this book.As Lovecraft earns more academic attention, surely others will notice the religious potential of the Great Old Ones that were, in their time, gods.A guilty pleasure read, to be sure, Gothic Dreams Cthulhu fits well into this serious world of chaos we’ve created for ourselves.