As part of our Countdown to Hallowe’en, our SFFWorld Horror expert, Randy M., gives us his take on a classic Lovecraft Horror story.
Some visions break you. Thomas Malone, New York City police detective, had such a vision and the story starts with him recuperating in rural New England, but still mindful of his experience, his terror easily triggered.
Just before and during a rash of kidnappings and disappearances in the Red Hook district of New York City, Robert Suydam transforms from portly to svelte, and from distracted scholar to sharply in the moment as he slyly parries his relatives’ attempts to institutionalize him. The change appears to stem from his latest line of study, the moldering tomes he’s bought and imported connected to ancient beliefs and their attendant and loathsome rites.
Investigating the kidnappings and disappearances, Malone, a man sensitive to intimations of powers beyond our own, suffers dreams suggesting horrors. Inevitably, Malone and Suydam must meet and when they do Malone glimpses the source of Suydam’s metamorphosis.
Based on his short residence in Brooklyn, this is one of the least of Lovecraft’s works and also one of his most overtly racist. His frequent descriptions of the “Syrian, Spanish, Italian and negro elements” inhabiting Red Hook and the implication of their degradation and unsavory character can easily make readers today gnash her or his teeth. But even Malone isn’t allowed off the … um … hook since Lovecraft attributes his sensitivity to his Celtic ancestry. Though “The Horror at Red Hook” is unsuccessful and even repellant as a story, it features some strong images and, in Robert Suydam, a villain who draws the reader’s attention.
Lovecraft’s imagination and creation still exerts a pull on contemporary writers, even some who because of his stated beliefs objected to his bust as the World Fantasy Award, and maybe that’s why several recently published works incorporating Lovecraft and his mythos examine, analyze and challenge the problematic features of his work. Two have specifically adapted “The Horror of Red Hook” to their purposes. One of those writers is Victor LaValle, whose book The Ballad of Black Tom I will review next.
“THE HORROR AT RED HOOK” by H. P. Lovecraft (Weird Tales, 1927)
