TUNNEL LIGHTS

I think I'm going to have to give up on this book. I really dislike saying such things but I am very underwhelmed by The Call of Cthulhu and other weird stories by H.P. Lovecraft. It could be due to desensitization or the amount of hype and praise that various friends gave H.P. Lovecraft. I am a proud child of the 70’s and 80’s so some of the first media I was ever exposed to was the slasher horror flick. Jason, Michael Myers (Halloween 3 sucked so much I begged my mother to let me watch it and was so mad because it was nothing like 1 or 2, and was really poorly written and made no sense) Freddy Kurger, Chucky, Damien, and Regan Burstyn were all the odd protagonist of my day. Some of my favorite television in my childhood was the twilight zone, the outer limits, tales from the darkside, tales from the crypt, monsters, and one of the ones that really love was Friday the 13^th the series.

When I allotted time to be properly horrified by the man countless critics called, the father and master of American horror I was very disappointed. His writing style is beautiful he is one of the few writers that transform the written word into experience. There is a point that you do not notice where you stop reading and you are merely following the events of the unfolding epic. The unfortunate part is the epic that unfolds is the archetype of anticlimactic. I wanted to like these stories, and they were good, but from what I had heard, I expected a great deal more.

Dagon: seemed to be nothing more than a spooky dream that had not reached full nightmare status at worse, an initial outline for The Call of Cthulhu at best

The Statement of Randolph Carter: Was an attempt at suspense but the constant reminder of the horrors that we can not see, and would drive a weaker man insane only made the second hand recount of the terrors more interesting and I was hoping at one point he would jump down the well and just help his friend. To me as the reader I thought that was the logical next step but it wasn’t and the ending, Ill be honest, was campy.

Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family: This was just silly and a tad bit racists. He protagonist sets himself on fire because he finds out that he is probably the last descendent of a race of white gorillas that happen to breed with people.

Celphais: Is really a story about a guy that had a good acid dream and spends the rest of his life trying to get back to it and dies when he does.

Nyarlathotep: I believe this was probably what inspired the first two mummy movies. If you have seen them then you have the jist of this short here.

And the great

The Call of Cthulhu: This was such a disappointment. Cthulhu is an ageless squid, octopus dragon god with wings that has been dormant but conscience for ages beyond count or measure. It gives artists and poets nightmares and causes its worshipers to go frantic with frenzy. Anyone that speaks of Cthulhu to anyone that does not know of Cthulhu, dies. One day a sailor stumbles upon Dagon’s island… I mean Cthulhu’s island and sees Dagon’s monolith… I mean Cthulhu’s monolith and the rest of ancient city that housed the old one. “and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight." I mean that line alone just one of the things that angers me. I mean if you have been around trillions of years before the first organisms on earth began to form and shaped the very thoughts of early man in ape form, you could not get one of your worshipers to come jail break you? And how weak are you that a boat can ram you and cause your head to explode. COME ON

I read a few other stories but I wont review them because I don’t like to continue in negative. If you like Horror and are a great fan of Poe, stay away from H.P. Lovecraft, save for style and technique alone. The contents of these stories, however beautifully written, are for me a classic case of the dangers of hype.

So I did a HUGE update to my website

New home page

http://cfbrown.com/index.htm

28 new poems

http://cfbrown.com/index_files/Page489.htm

6 new color photos

http://cfbrown.com/index_files/Page1524.htm

2 new black and white

http://cfbrown.com/index_files/Page6776.htm

New Blog section

So far its just my latest book reviews and blogs

http://cfbrown.com/index_files/Page25791.htm

check it out

Every so often, I come across a book that not only causes me to examine my most steadfast beliefs but also resonates with them, as if the book was a tuning fork struck against my soul. Walden by Henry David Thoreau is one such book. Calling it a mere book I feel, is doing it an injustice. What these letters, these syllables, and words form in their entirety is, to me, one of the great literary works of art. Walden by Henry David Thoreau is a work of the greatest, deepest philosophical proportions that any lover of wisdom would be doing him or herself a disservice by passing the opportunity to take the trip to the pond by. Walden by Henry David Thoreau, unlike other works of this magnitude, is also not written so as that it confounds understanding to those whom would read this as template to their own love ode of nature.

On the dust jacket or back of the book you might find something equivalent to saying that Walden is the two year, two month, two day, (and knowing Thoreau two hour) chronicles of a man that built a home and lived by a pond that gives title to the book. It might also express his declaration of discontent of what was then modern man; his society that he felt lacked its right to claim civility, and his technology. This is all very much true but like Thoreau, there was more, much more than those opening words and simplified thoughts laying on the surface can explain.

What resides in these pages are, what was then, a new philosophical view that respected nature. It explained that nature was more than something to be tamed and or bent to the will of man and called for recognition of its sovereignty. In Walden Thoreau also asserted that to call one’s self a man, a civilized man, one must not behave as the beasts of nature.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city, you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”

 Henry David Thoreau

Walden

The first chapter, Economy, the longest single piece of work in the book, outlines why he embarked on this mission. From early on, it reads as if a semi-edited stream of consciousness that expresses a yearning to simplify one’s life and rid oneself of the rigors that social life and a proper standing in high society of New England demanded.

“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

He expresses his contempt for the high esteeming attitude, which still prevails today, people had and have for fashion, homes, and miss appropriated civic pride and calls all that read to come to an epiphany of what is true and what actually is necessary in life. He also does not shy away from telling and expressing his faith. He also does not hold a close mind in that believing he can only learn from faith solely but expresses how all of nature is part of creation and there by his learning is only heighten, not hindered by experiencing and being a part of nature. This being a part of nature he also felt and expressed that civilized man was again retreating from too rabidly.

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

I pause here to say that the chapter entitled Reading will forever hold a special place in my heart because of this quote here,

“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something as once more intimate with us and more universal that any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be actually breathed from all human lips; not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.”

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

If you read Walden for nothing else, I say read enough to get to this point. Read until you have arrived to this statement so you can fully appreciate the profoundness and beauty of what had been written, what your eyes just had the privilege to have read. Anyone that writes, anyone that sings, anyone that appreciates literature, poetry, and song for the art that it is understands the wonder that was expressed by such an uncomplicated and deeply insightful statement. One other statement that truly reveals how this man born in 1817 and this work written in 1854 was far ahead of its time, reaching into our own some one hundred and fifty four years later, but also shows how far we have not gone in the those one hundred and fifty four years.

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications.”

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Clearly Thoreau touched on points that we still speak about today, if not it is probably worse today. We do not sit down with friends or family today for even one meal yet we hold strict contempt for strangers that disobey the rules of etiquette and politeness. I once saw a woman curse another woman out because she did not hold the door open for her as they were walking in the store, but the woman that walked in the store in front of the other woman did not even see or know another person was behind her so why would she hold the door open. If we change the post office to starbucks or some fast-food place for lunch and the fire side to tv or computer and we have relevant commentary about today.

This is where my love affair with Walden ends. If you are reading this work for its philosophical merit alone then I will say upon approaching the chapter The bean field skip to the conclusion. The remainder of the book is just details and true odes to birds, fishing, the pond, and other natural aspects that have worth but reading all of them becomes very monotonous. Read this book for its philosophical worth. Read this book for its historical value and being one of the early roots of environmentalism and naturalism in America. Read this book and ponder.

“Shall we always study to obtain more of these of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?

Henry David Thoreau

Walden