The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
The Call of Cthulhu is a feast of creepiness told in colorful language, which is only flawed by Lovecraft’s primitive obsession with physiognomy and base racism. I view it as funny, because they are (to quote HP himself) “obsolete and ridiculous,” but I sympathize with people of color who read this and have to deal with dismissive references to such things as Negro fetishism. The story itself is almost without a plot, just a report of a horror of the odious being that the sailors rouse from its sleep. The prose is circuitous and leisurely, but Lovecraft’s imagination is perturbing and vision resolves clear in the end, and it’s scary. Really scary.