The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

I first discovered Lovecraft when I was young, perhaps in junior high? I read everything of his at that time, but this particular work was a bit beyond me.

Now, re-reading it decades later, I understand and respect it more. I like his masterful use of dramatic irony as the characters are slow to discover or understand the cosmic horror which the reader is already privy to, creating a tension that ensnares the reader. I think this novella is less ambiguous than many of his other works, and he tells us almost everything about what finally befell poor Charles Dexter Ward. The setting of Old Providence is beautifully done, and the scenes set underground are particularly chilling. Granted, there are some rambling, slow passages, and a smidge show more of the racism that mars some of his writing. It is a product of its time, but still enjoyable. show less

Lovecraft's only full-length novel (though a short one) and a classic of the genre. It falls just short of masterpiece due to a slightly prosaic feel that never quite attains the scope of something like At the Mountains of Madness and the Shadow Out of time, to name two of his other longer works. Which isn't necessarily a criticism per se since it's a different type of story, more in common with the works of Poe and Hawthorne than Hodgson or Blackwood. It's simply that I prefer his more cosmically themed work, and feel that Lovecraft excelled more strongly in that area. Tales of witchcraft and the occult were hardly new, even in Lovecraft's day, and had already been attempted by bigger-name writers than himself.

The novel isn't without show more its high points, of course: for one, a strong evocation of place that includes more than a few semi-autobiographical details, as well as a good deal of authentic New England folklore and history, all of which add a richness to the tale that raises it above his other works of this ilk. There are also some magnificently eerie moments such as the doctor's exploration of the abandoned catacombs, as well as a surprisingly rousing action scene early in the book. Unfortunately some recurring Lovecraft faults are also present: a rather too credulous and naive set of characters, an over-reluctance to reveal a particular twist long after said twist should have become blindingly apparent to everyone concerned, and a somewhat fuzzy main threat that's just a little too ill-defined to be truly terrifying.

Taken as a whole, though, I found The Case of Charles Dexter Ward to be a gripping and well-wrought tale of New England witchcraft, worth reading as much for its autobiographical content as its merits as a horror tale. show less

As Lovecraft himself declined to have this story published, I had a disquieting feeling that I might not be driven beyond horror through Cyclopean ruins and preternatural visions of madness! Paradoxically, my fears were both expunged and loathsomely augmented as I delved deep into the endless catacombs of Pawtuxet, searching out horrors both nameless and unimaginable and yet so cosmically effulgent in Lovecraft's accursed manuscript of alchemical necromancy!!

"He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away over the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their show more exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries." ...yes, it's that good.

P.S. OGTHROD AI’F GEB’L—EE’H YOG-SOTHOTH ’NGAH’NG AI’Y ZHRO !!! show less

No sé qué más pudiera decir que no se haya dicho ya sobre H.P. Lovecraft más allá de reiterar que fue un escritor fuera de serie.

Este libro que antes que cualquier otra cosa tiene una prosa maravillosa, una manera de estar escrito que es prodigioso, una historia por demás singular y por supuesto interesante, pero a pesar de ser un libro de terror, lo que más llama la atención es la manera en que Lovecraft nos pinta un escenario tenebroso, no es que, de miedo, es que se siente el ambiente oscuro y extraño de lo que cuenta.

El caso de Charles Dexter Ward no es en absoluto una historia de terror al uso, es más bien como si lo que Lovecraft hiciera fuera dibujarnos todo el humo alrededor de ese miedo que se supone se debe de show more sentir, la historia es magnífica, retorcida y absolutamente genial.

Poco a poco y de manera muy despacio nos va relatando la historia de este personaje, de cómo se va metiendo en la oscuridad, en la locura y de alguna manera tratando de explicar las razones por las cuales Ward termina como lo ha hecho.

No es una lectura ágil, pero tampoco necesita serlo, éste aunque es un libro corto, es uno de esos que hay que leerse despacio, que te obliga a leerlo de esa manera, es curioso que aún y cuando se nos relatan los hechos, lo cierto es que lo redacta de tal manera que hay que poner todos los sentidos para poder comprender todo lo que se cuenta, los hechos, motivos, razones y por supuesto a como se llegó al final.

Un final absolutamente fascinante, tan bien construido y manejado que aún y cuando sabía que la historia iba para ese final, no dejó de sorprenderme, más por la forma en que se llega al mismo que por lo que se cuenta.

Es un libro maravilloso, absolutamente recomendable. show less

Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the show more quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

I am out of review space under [b:The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft|11851522|The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327886768s/11851522.jpg|16807494], and I seem to be headed into the longer works now, so I am going to start reviewing them individually, I think. This one, at least. This one is the first of Lovecraft's tales to date (and I have slogged through everything he wrote as a sole author from 1917 to 1926 so far) that I have really, genuinely enjoyed beginning to end. Just some general points regarding the overall craft:

*When Lovecraft actually bothers to write dialogue, it's generally very, very good. All the conversations in this tale really work to heighten the creep factor. I wish he'd done this more often.

*The whole story balances around the quote I've pulled above, and I just love everything that is going on in that passage. This is really 100% Grade A mastery, here.

*The balance between truly horrific cosmic realities and a hero who has just enough luck and fortitude to win this one time actually works in this one, largely because the villainy and heroism are both kept directly at a human level.

*There is a cosmic something emergent in the story, but it is left with just a scrap of mystery. Everything else is explained. It works. Somehow Lovecraft finally manages to hit the balance he's been grasping for exactly in this outing.

*The Mythos continues to grow in the background, with our friend Randolph Carter making another return trip through a tiny reference to tie the whole matter back into previous stories. This helps explain the hero's otherwise rather improbable ability to fight fire with fire. The conspiracy that is revealed in this tale will be making returns in the future stories, I feel sure. Lovecraft has finally come up with an evil that isn't just hand waving at primitive cults.

*Even though so much of the story depends on [b:The Picture of Dorian Gray|5297|The Picture of Dorian Gray|Oscar Wilde|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1424596966s/5297.jpg|1858012], I found the outright reference to Wilde's disgrace disconcerting. Probably just a problem for a modern reader.

*Another black cat, this one named Nig. Really, Lovecraft?

*Lovecraft actually gives us four whole sympathetic characters to cheer on. I am not big on being able to 'relate' to a character, but wow does sympathetic characterization help me with Lovecraft.

*Lovecraft loved New England so, so much. With everything else I hate about him, that fact is so very endearing.

*You know that trope that so annoys me, where protagonists are slow to figure everything out and are still stumbling about in the dark light years after the reader knows what happened? Yeah, that happens here. But I've almost come to find this endearing about Lovecraft as well. And it this case, the piece by piece reveal to the characters is more the point of the story than the mystery to be resolved, and that reveal is done incredibly well and it very satisfying.

*The explanations that are given here are all excellent and nothing in this story crosses over into stupid territory. This one sits very firmly in the fantasy genre for me (rather than horror), but it is deliciously creepy fantasy. (Plenty of gross, but no close ups of the gross, and after every other flipping story in the collection I'm reading, that works fine for me.)

*I am not sure this story would work quite so well for someone who hasn't read the rest of his works up to this point, unfortunately. Otherwise this would be a great place to start with Lovecraft.

Tl;dr: Good job, H.P. Loved it. show less

This was the second Lovecraft story I read, after At the Mountains of Madness, so at the time I knew next to nothing about Lovecraft's mythos and other writings. (That didn't last long, though.) Now with two volumes of his work under my belt, this is still the story that has stuck with me the most. It takes a while to get into, and the old-fashioned, stuffy prose doesn't help the slow start, but once things start picking up with terrible revelations and horrible implications, there's no putting it down. I find it fascinating how Lovecraft is able to pull off such a terrifying story with no gratuitous visuals. Everything is implied rather than shown directly. When describing a monster, in this story at least, Lovecraft doesn't go into show more actual physical descriptions, but instead simply describes how terrifying in appearance the creature is. And the genius of it is, it works. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is easily the masterpiece of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. show less

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is the latest magisterial Lovecraftian publication from the University of Tampa Press. What connection could a Florida university have with a staunch Rhode Islander like HPL? Interestingly, RH Barlow of De Land, FL was a correspondent and friend of HPL who served as his literary executor. UT Press has made a small industry of publishing Lovecraftiana, including A Comprehensive Bibliography and Oh, Fortunate Floridian (the letters of HPL to RH Barlow). A major player in these publications has been ST Joshi, the eminent Lovecraft scholar, who edits these books. As you might guess, the content has been more of interest to readers fascinated with HPL’s life, with scholars and with collectors, rather than to show more general readers. Well, it is a university press!

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is their latest foray into Lovecraftian publishing. TCOCDW was written very quickly in 1927 and HPL never really made efforts to have it published during his lifetime. There are several reasons why it now merits an urgent recommendation. The production is simply wonderful. I have the hardcover and it is simply a beautiful book to behold. The editing is by ST Joshi and we may safely consider this to be a definitive edition, superseding all others. There are copious notes on the text by Mr. Joshi which do a wonderful job of keeping everything in its proper context. You can read the novel through but it helped me immensely to stop and refer to the notes. We then have a marvelous afterward by Mr. Joshi. Not only is it very scholarly but it is also quite readable, as interesting it its own right as the text itself. Finally we have the crowning glory of the book, a series of photographs of buildings from Lovecraft’s Providence by Donovan K. Loucks. For those of us not lucky enough to have trod the streets of Providence in the footsteps of HPL and Poe, these add immeasurably to the reading experience. I cannot imagine a better way to experience The Case of Charles Dexter Ward; anyone who is a serious Lovecraftian simply must have a copy.

Now of course I could wish for one more thing and that would have been a street map of Providence with these locations marked out, and perhaps a map of greater Providence with neighboring towns indicated. Well I looked them up online myself and I guess I can’t be too greedy.

The fly in the ointment of course, is HPL’s text itself, which even he did not have high regard for. For idle dabblers and or those new to Lovecraft, TCOCDW is not the place to start. I remember reading a version of the text at age 14 and it did not leave any sort of favorable impression, what with all the references to colonial Rhode Island that made no sense to me then. I got lost in a salad of words and names. Even today I find it almost to be a caricature of HPL’s writing. It can be viewed as a stepping stone on his way to his greater masterpieces, a sort of farewell to supernatural fiction and a turning towards science fiction. I read it as a personal love letter from HPL to Providence with a horror story thrown in.

At the very least, the paperback is none too expensive and The University of Tampa Press has given us a model of how all of HPL’s works should be presented. I can only hope for more wonders from this source. show less