The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, twice rejected by his usual stalking ground Weird Tales Magazine (who today have a wonderful Facebook page that showcases a plethora of genre art and fiction from across the internet, which I heartily recommend checking out) and eventually published in book form in 1936. It features a nameless protagonist making a seemingly unassuming trek across New England to gather some notes for his family tree and generally doss about admiring the architecture. Along the way he is captivated by dark tales and unsettling rumours of a shadowy town called Innsmouth, and instead of avoiding it like the plague like a normal person would, he finds himself intrigued and takes the first bus there. What follows is a brush with cosmic forces of such unquestionable might and mind-bending horror that it throws his life, and indeed his very sanity, into the balance.
When I was drawing up my plans and tossing about ideas for this segment, I always knew this was the book I wanted to tackle first, that my choice was always going to be this. Only three authors really touched my life in any significant way during these last few years of very sparse reading. George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman and H. P. Lovecraft, and of the three of them? I think it was Lovecraft who most got under my skin. As a man, he was truly fascinating. Every time I take a tentative nose into his life, I come away learning something new and surprising about him. As a writer, though? Even through all the awkward turns of phrase, antiquated (even for his time!) writing technique and often nameless, faceless protagonists who you know are doomed by the end, that man's imagination and descriptive ability is so incredibly precise and far ranging that you can't help but be sucked into his works, and despair at the sheer insignificance of mankind. His fingerprint on genre fiction is greater than most realise. The tendrils of his influence creep out to more obvious places, such as the works of Stephen King, to the more prevalent but less obvious places such as Doctor Who. Over the past few years, these influences, in-jokes and references have been becoming more and more obvious across a variety of entertainment media and it's fantastic to finally see the Man from Providence get the recognition he deserves. Even if it does mostly take the shape of Cthulhu plushies.
As enthralled as I was by his work, however, there were, and still are, shamefully large gaps in my mythos reading - And The Shadow Over Innsmouth always felt like the largest and most glaring. For reasons we'll get onto later, the Deep Ones? Always feel like they're kind of a big deal in Lovecraft's personal mythology of cosmic horror, and it's good to finally be well acquainted with their landmark story. After all this build up, though, how does it stack up? Well, let's find out!
The first thing that really grabbed me about Shadow is the fantastic opening hook. We get a fevered report of government raids and the bombing of a reef by the military from our protagonist, with the frantic insistence that even this drastic action? Will never be enough! For what? Why was it necessary in the first place? Why is this guy so bug-eyed terrified right now?! I suppose we'll have to read on and find out! Soon we're properly introduced to our protagonist, who... Well, let's play Lovecraft protagonist bingo, shall we? Painfully academic? Check! Only wrapped up in this whole sorry business due to some form of investigation into his family ties? Check! Frequently leaving common sense and caution at the door only to be led by the nose by rabid curiosity of the mere hint of something man was not supposed to know? Ladies and Gentleman, I'm calling Bingo! But whatever traits he might share with other, poor, doomed souls in Lovecraft's tales, he's still very identifiable and provides an excellent viewpoint into the madness that we're about to be embroiled in.
One of the main strengths of the book, I feel, is it's writing style. In my experience there are two types of Lovecraft story, ones that are so full of awkward phrasing, bits of scientific jargon and clunky, impenetrable language that even though the core spark of imagination and intrigue may be there? It's like wading through treacle to get to a teaspoon of honey. Then there are the stories that instantly engage and require no work at all to read and enjoy. Shadow definitely falls into the later category. It's a surprisingly easy read, yet Lovecraft's passion for language still shines through very strongly. Through his narrative he paints a vivid picture of both the town and it's unusual inhabitants throughout, with the devil very much being in the details. Small things like the protagonist noting the lack of domesticated animals as he strolls through town the first time (picking up none of the usual animal noises one would expect, but pay no attention too), or that the bolt on his hotel room door has been freshly, and purposely, removed help to build up the sense of unease and dark purpose, as well as helping to paint Innsmouth as a desolate, dilapidated town that is so far past it's prime it would be charitable to call it a ruin.
His scene setting is beautiful, yet at the same time he has the good sense to know when to hold back on the detail and let the imagination run wild. We know, as readers, what the Deep Ones are going to look like from the start. They are depicted on a tiara in a library the character visits at the beginning of the book, and ghoulish appearance of the town residents with their bulging eyes and stooped gait is enough to let you put it together in your mind. Yet, Lovecraft never puts it together for you until their eventual reveal - Which somehow still manages to pack a punch, even though flickering images of these beings have been haunting the text since the first chapter. There's also the foreboding Devil's Reef, which is a focal point of the story, but never given a full descriptor. We never travel there. We only see it, through the eyes of our protagonist, far off in the distance - Full of wonder and menace. The strange rituals and ceremonies performed there left only for us to guess at.
The residents of Innsmouth themselves make an interesting foil, but can also make a troublesome one. I'm not even going to try to pretend the undercurrents of disapproval for interracial marriage don't exist. They do. Even if you knew nothing about Lovecraft's race prejudice, it's pretty clear from the text. The only reason that the Deep Ones got away with what they did for so long is that everyone in the neighbouring town just assumed they'd let some foreign strain run rampant in their bloodline, or all contracted some physical aliment that made them unsightly. As if the two are as bad as each other. Yet for Shadow I can forgive this, because the story touches upon so much else. It touches on physical and mental degradation, and how much of each you can suffer before you stop being human. It touches on small town paranoia and the fear of the other very effectively, one could easily draw parallels from Shadow Over Innsmouth to later works such as The Wickerman for example. Summer Isle may well be a classier place at first glance, but under the surface they share and awful lot in common with their fishy, New England counterparts. It's also a love story.
No, really. It is. There have been sweeping, epic love songs written about it. Which I sadly can't embed, but I urge you to check out the song with accompanying motion comic here. And if you're still not convinced, we have the other side of the coin, the break-up song as well.
Well, okay, I admit I may be stretching the definition here to justify this being a Valentine's Day special (which it is, ladies and gentlemen! Happy Valentines Day, have some fish men!) but if not romantic love, then family love is certainly part of the foundation of this tale.
Even the humans who had most contact with the horrors from below, Obed Marsh and the vaguely sinister tribe from a far off land that he learned these rituals from (because of course there's a band of mad foreigners at the heart of all this) seemed reluctant to get freaky with the fishes. All the specific unions between warm and cold blood are described as either forced, or at one point 'a trick' and the only possible desirable thing to come from it all is that your children will be immortal. No direct benefit to yourself, just the promise that your future family will live forever as a Deep Ones, with some time as a regular human thrown in beforehand. It's a curious incentive because while knowing your children and grandchildren will never die, you're also going to know that they'll spend most of their life as something you regard as disgusting. I can only imagine that the Deep Ones must have whispered tales of the coming of the Old Ones and the horror that would plunge the world into, and how this way... This way, you'd be keeping your family safe. In the long run, at least.
Which really feeds into one of the more interesting, and easily overlooked, layers of Shadow, it's ruminations on faith. The first truly terrifying thing our protagonist sees, the one thing that goes beyond slightly unnerving or just plain odd and plunges him head first into outright horror, is a deformed priest shambling out of the church. This visage haunts him throughout the story, and it becomes very clear that not only has the Esoteric Order of Dagon moved in to take over the town, but they've claimed the old time faith (embodied by the two churches left standing in the town) as their own. Lovecraft is no fan of religion, and it's interesting to see his barbed, yet subtle, jabs at it take shape in the text. In Shadow's universe, faith only goes as far as the prosperity it brings you, and while immortality was the prize for mating with them, the Deep Ones would bring gold and fish in abundance just for the act of engaging in their strange rituals and feeding their hungers.
As a Christian township, Innsmouth is on the road to a decay it will never recover from. The townsfolk are so desperate, that they will willingly abandon their faith on little more than Obed Marsh's promises of prosperity and wealth, and the town's parsons, ministers and other assorted keepers of the faith? The first to go. Of course, the Order of Dagon is also leading them on the road to damnation of a different kind, but as long as there are fish in their bellies and gold to sell onto Arkham and Ipswich, who cares?
Even the humans who had most contact with the horrors from below, Obed Marsh and the vaguely sinister tribe from a far off land that he learned these rituals from (because of course there's a band of mad foreigners at the heart of all this) seemed reluctant to get freaky with the fishes. All the specific unions between warm and cold blood are described as either forced, or at one point 'a trick' and the only possible desirable thing to come from it all is that your children will be immortal. No direct benefit to yourself, just the promise that your future family will live forever as a Deep Ones, with some time as a regular human thrown in beforehand. It's a curious incentive because while knowing your children and grandchildren will never die, you're also going to know that they'll spend most of their life as something you regard as disgusting. I can only imagine that the Deep Ones must have whispered tales of the coming of the Old Ones and the horror that would plunge the world into, and how this way... This way, you'd be keeping your family safe. In the long run, at least.
Which really feeds into one of the more interesting, and easily overlooked, layers of Shadow, it's ruminations on faith. The first truly terrifying thing our protagonist sees, the one thing that goes beyond slightly unnerving or just plain odd and plunges him head first into outright horror, is a deformed priest shambling out of the church. This visage haunts him throughout the story, and it becomes very clear that not only has the Esoteric Order of Dagon moved in to take over the town, but they've claimed the old time faith (embodied by the two churches left standing in the town) as their own. Lovecraft is no fan of religion, and it's interesting to see his barbed, yet subtle, jabs at it take shape in the text. In Shadow's universe, faith only goes as far as the prosperity it brings you, and while immortality was the prize for mating with them, the Deep Ones would bring gold and fish in abundance just for the act of engaging in their strange rituals and feeding their hungers.
As a Christian township, Innsmouth is on the road to a decay it will never recover from. The townsfolk are so desperate, that they will willingly abandon their faith on little more than Obed Marsh's promises of prosperity and wealth, and the town's parsons, ministers and other assorted keepers of the faith? The first to go. Of course, the Order of Dagon is also leading them on the road to damnation of a different kind, but as long as there are fish in their bellies and gold to sell onto Arkham and Ipswich, who cares?
It's not all sunny in Innsmouth though (well, it's never sunny there, but just go with me a minute, guys!) as the book does have some problems. It comes very close to falling apart and running out of steam in chapter five, where our hero has uncovered the dark secret of the town and is involved in a mad chase across it to freedom. In what should have been one of the most exciting and nail biting sequences in the book, the writing unfortunately gets bogged down with a plethora of street and road names, each getting a name check as the main character passes through them, or simply plans too, or finds that he cannot. I admire Lovecraft's attention to detail, but at times this sequence feels far too much like trying to read a road atlas while already in transit. You see a lot of names, but you never really take them in. For me, it drained some of the drama and atmosphere the rest of the book had been working so hard to build.
While Lovecraft's descriptive abilities are in full force - Not everything hits the mark. This is a very minor nitpick, that I can't explain, and if it hadn't annoyed me so much I wouldn't be bringing it up, but if I had to read one more sentence describing the town as 'shadowy' I may well have gone out to find somebody to punch. Perhaps it was a little too on the nose for my liking, perhaps I felt that it was sometimes very awkwardly inserted into sentences. I'm not sure. All I can tell you is I was fed up of seeing it.
The story also feels as though some background in Lovecraft's mythos may be required to get the most out of it. I have to wonder, for example, if the full force of the brief mention of a Shoggoth could be appreciated by somebody who isn't already familiar with what a Shoggoth is, and why it's bad news. The book never really explains this, just that Zadok seems really scared of it, so you should be too! It's a minor thing, but it does limit the extent that Shadow can be enjoyed as a standalone. It could also be argued that Shadow is pretty much a grab bag of Lovecraftian tropes mashed together into one story. The way the narration is presented, especially in the beginning, is very reminiscent of At The Mountains of Madness. The eventual fate of our protagonist could be likened to other Lovecraft main characters, such as the unfortunate soul from The Rats in the Walls and we've already played Lovecraft protagonist bingo, so I don't need to bring that up again.
All of these faults or minor failings can be forgiven because Shadow is a great story, well executed. The narration pulls you in quicker than that of Mountains, and the ending, well the ending is a thing of perverse wonder. You're probably going to see it coming from a mile away, the hints to it are littered all through the text, but the lengths that it is taken? Truly chilling, and had me walking away from the book with a dull sense of unease in the back of my mind and a great big grin plastered across my face. Who can really ask for much more than that?
I was planning to talk about the popularity of the Deep Ones as a discussion point to this segment, as it's undeniable that they are one of the more recognisable aspects of Lovecraft's mythos - Perhaps ranking only behind Great Cthulhu and Arkham town themselves. There's a book series called Shadows Over Innsmouth which features a host of authors telling stories related to the town, including Neil Gaiman and another favourite of mine, Michael Marshall Smith. Innsmouth related expansions to both Arkham Horror and Call of Cthulhu, as well as a family of Deep Ones in Cthulhu Gloom. There's also been a very fun comic that was recently announced, pitting pulp hero The Shadow against the inhabitants of Innsmouth. Originally I was going to talk about how the Deep Ones, as portrayed in Shadow, tap into a universal fear of both the enemy within and the enemy so far beyond the realms of our imagination that we can barely comprehend. They're the monster under the bed, and that shifty looking neighbour we wouldn't let our kids near, all rolled into one and as such lend themselves to multiple purposes within both narrative fiction and gaming. Brian McNaughton also presented an interesting take in his short story The Doom That Came to Innsmouth where the residents of that ill-fated town were instead cast as a repressed minority that had been stripped of their religious rights, with heavy parallels to Japanese internment camps in WWII. Unfortunately this more sympathetic angle fell to pieces when the Deep Ones did as Deep Ones do and I walked away from that story quite disgusted by the main character in particular, but it proves that the Deep Ones can be as strong, if not stronger, as vampires or zombies as allegories for a variety of human conditions. If you were willing to twist them away a little from Lovecraft's original vision, of course.
But ultimately, I don't think I need to go into any of that. I can't help but feel that the truth behind the popularity of the Deep Ones lies in exactly what I've written above - The Shadow Over Innsmouth is an incredibly well written story that brings not only its hideous, otherworldly nasties to life, but also the town of Innsmouth itself. Innsmouth is a place that lives and breathes, it's a character onto itself and sometimes it feels like the protagonist is more fighting against it's tumbling steeples and darkened doorways than it's peculiar residents. Considering just how vivid the environments and characters are in this story, is it really any wonder that even seventy eight years down the line, modern authors and game writers would still want to draw influence and inspiration from it?
If I you're looking for a quick and easy way into Lovecraft's writing, then... Honestly I'd recommend The Cats of Ulthar instead. It's written in the same easy, engaging style as Shadow is, but is much shorter and has less obvious mythos related strings attached. Plus you'll be able to go forth onto the internet and create Ulthar cats as opposed to lolcats in the future!
While Lovecraft's descriptive abilities are in full force - Not everything hits the mark. This is a very minor nitpick, that I can't explain, and if it hadn't annoyed me so much I wouldn't be bringing it up, but if I had to read one more sentence describing the town as 'shadowy' I may well have gone out to find somebody to punch. Perhaps it was a little too on the nose for my liking, perhaps I felt that it was sometimes very awkwardly inserted into sentences. I'm not sure. All I can tell you is I was fed up of seeing it.
The story also feels as though some background in Lovecraft's mythos may be required to get the most out of it. I have to wonder, for example, if the full force of the brief mention of a Shoggoth could be appreciated by somebody who isn't already familiar with what a Shoggoth is, and why it's bad news. The book never really explains this, just that Zadok seems really scared of it, so you should be too! It's a minor thing, but it does limit the extent that Shadow can be enjoyed as a standalone. It could also be argued that Shadow is pretty much a grab bag of Lovecraftian tropes mashed together into one story. The way the narration is presented, especially in the beginning, is very reminiscent of At The Mountains of Madness. The eventual fate of our protagonist could be likened to other Lovecraft main characters, such as the unfortunate soul from The Rats in the Walls and we've already played Lovecraft protagonist bingo, so I don't need to bring that up again.
All of these faults or minor failings can be forgiven because Shadow is a great story, well executed. The narration pulls you in quicker than that of Mountains, and the ending, well the ending is a thing of perverse wonder. You're probably going to see it coming from a mile away, the hints to it are littered all through the text, but the lengths that it is taken? Truly chilling, and had me walking away from the book with a dull sense of unease in the back of my mind and a great big grin plastered across my face. Who can really ask for much more than that?
I was planning to talk about the popularity of the Deep Ones as a discussion point to this segment, as it's undeniable that they are one of the more recognisable aspects of Lovecraft's mythos - Perhaps ranking only behind Great Cthulhu and Arkham town themselves. There's a book series called Shadows Over Innsmouth which features a host of authors telling stories related to the town, including Neil Gaiman and another favourite of mine, Michael Marshall Smith. Innsmouth related expansions to both Arkham Horror and Call of Cthulhu, as well as a family of Deep Ones in Cthulhu Gloom. There's also been a very fun comic that was recently announced, pitting pulp hero The Shadow against the inhabitants of Innsmouth. Originally I was going to talk about how the Deep Ones, as portrayed in Shadow, tap into a universal fear of both the enemy within and the enemy so far beyond the realms of our imagination that we can barely comprehend. They're the monster under the bed, and that shifty looking neighbour we wouldn't let our kids near, all rolled into one and as such lend themselves to multiple purposes within both narrative fiction and gaming. Brian McNaughton also presented an interesting take in his short story The Doom That Came to Innsmouth where the residents of that ill-fated town were instead cast as a repressed minority that had been stripped of their religious rights, with heavy parallels to Japanese internment camps in WWII. Unfortunately this more sympathetic angle fell to pieces when the Deep Ones did as Deep Ones do and I walked away from that story quite disgusted by the main character in particular, but it proves that the Deep Ones can be as strong, if not stronger, as vampires or zombies as allegories for a variety of human conditions. If you were willing to twist them away a little from Lovecraft's original vision, of course.
But ultimately, I don't think I need to go into any of that. I can't help but feel that the truth behind the popularity of the Deep Ones lies in exactly what I've written above - The Shadow Over Innsmouth is an incredibly well written story that brings not only its hideous, otherworldly nasties to life, but also the town of Innsmouth itself. Innsmouth is a place that lives and breathes, it's a character onto itself and sometimes it feels like the protagonist is more fighting against it's tumbling steeples and darkened doorways than it's peculiar residents. Considering just how vivid the environments and characters are in this story, is it really any wonder that even seventy eight years down the line, modern authors and game writers would still want to draw influence and inspiration from it?
If I you're looking for a quick and easy way into Lovecraft's writing, then... Honestly I'd recommend The Cats of Ulthar instead. It's written in the same easy, engaging style as Shadow is, but is much shorter and has less obvious mythos related strings attached. Plus you'll be able to go forth onto the internet and create Ulthar cats as opposed to lolcats in the future!
(Image taken from A Dark and Stormy Night)
You could do far worse than this for a first foray into Lovecraft though, and if you've already delved into that world and haven't read this story, I'd urge you to go for it. You can even find it, in full, lurking in the darkest corners of the internet right over here. So you've really got no excuse at all now, have you?
With everything I've said in mind, I'm going to award The Shadow Over Innsmouth four monkeys in a hat out of five.
With everything I've said in mind, I'm going to award The Shadow Over Innsmouth four monkeys in a hat out of five.
(As an aside, if anybody with actual artistic talent would like to draw me a monkey in a hat to use for this section, I would be eternally grateful.)
Next month I'll be digging into my suggestions for the first time and pulling out The Ocean at the End of the Lane from the pile. If you wish to suggest books for me to read for future editions of this segment, please feel free to pop the title somewhere in either the blog comments or anywhere else I can see it. You can find further details for suggestions here, although going forward I think I'm going to drop the discussion point from the criteria. Having tackled this one, the books themselves should be more than enough!
Awesome review; it was my first foray into his works too, and the one that's left the greatest impression on me. Curious, have you seen Dagon, the sort-of film version? (In modern times, relocated to Spain)?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264508/
I watched it, against my better judgements. I really quite liked it :) Kept the tone perfectly. You really get a sense how degenerate the Innsmouthians are meant to be.
Hey Wander, thanks for the positive comments! :) I haven't seen Dagon, though always wondered if it was supposed to be an adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth or HPL's short story of the same name, so I guess now I know. Although it could be a bit of both! I've heard nothing but good things about it though, and have been meaning to check it out. Seems like I'm missing a fair bit of good, Lovecraft cinema right now.
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