- 14 Dec, 2025 *
A brief review of a Lovecraft anthology and "The Rats in the Walls" in particular.
The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft, Leslie S. Klinger ed. (Liveright, 2022)
I’ve never read Lovecraft before and I don’t think I can really say anything new about it analysis-wise. This edition has an awful lot of notes and even though I normally like notes about historical terms or contextual information, Klinger has added way too many personal opinions and analysis for me to enjoy. Maybe it’s my fault for not noticing that this was an annotated edition.
A lot of it is just trivia and fact checking. Knowing whether a certain city mentioned in the story actually exists or not, or whether it’s realistic that a character travelled a certain distance…
- 14 Dec, 2025 *
A brief review of a Lovecraft anthology and "The Rats in the Walls" in particular.
The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft, Leslie S. Klinger ed. (Liveright, 2022)
I’ve never read Lovecraft before and I don’t think I can really say anything new about it analysis-wise. This edition has an awful lot of notes and even though I normally like notes about historical terms or contextual information, Klinger has added way too many personal opinions and analysis for me to enjoy. Maybe it’s my fault for not noticing that this was an annotated edition.
A lot of it is just trivia and fact checking. Knowing whether a certain city mentioned in the story actually exists or not, or whether it’s realistic that a character travelled a certain distance in a certain amount of time does not improve my appreciation or understanding of the story in any way. And there is at least one multi-sentence footnote per page. I guess it would be more interesting for someone who is already a big Lovecraft nerd. Apparently Klinger published separate complete annotated volumes of Lovecraft, those must be half footnotes. So, unlike my usual practise of reading all footnotes, I’m ignoring them so I can actually immerse myself in the story.
I’m not very good at horror, I have too active an imagination, even kind of crap quality horror will get me jumping at shadows so I mostly avoid it. But the cosmic horror doesn’t bother me that much. Evil unknowable being at the bottom of the ocean? Interesting, sure, but not keeping me up at night. "The Rats in the Walls" though? That one is haunting me.
To add insult to injury the day after I read it Toronto Life had a piece in their email newsletter about how Toronto has been named the number one city for rats in Canada again this year. And then I read a horrific article from them back in 2013 about rats in the city that literally has an exterminator talk about how he thinks there is a warren of interconnected rat tunnels under the whole city. Great. Thanks guys. Going to be having nightmares about "swine" herds in the basement forever now. 🙈
(Aside: I have a lot of complaints about my apartment, believe me, but the one thing it has going for it is no infestations. I have seen two cockroaches in 6 years, and we had one minor flea infestation and that’s it. I consider that a victory when seemingly most of the housing in this city has one or more of: flooding/leaking, persistent mold, bedbugs, rats, mice, cockroaches, ants, raccoons, or squirrels.)
It’s not even that I’m afraid of rats. I think fancy rats are very cute and can be great pets. But I do not like imaginary or unseen rats in the walls, that part was a bit too vivid, especially with the cats’ behaviour described so realistically. I also resonate with what I learning is a repeating theme of Lovecraft’s which is fear of what madness might be lurking in your heredity. I think the story is especially effective at setting up expectations for a certain horror (rats in the basement, maybe some murdered corpses) and then reveals a much, much bigger one.
Even though I generally disagree with his conflation of "madness" i.e. psychological disorders and horrifying actions by humans towards other humans (or humanoids as the case may be) the fear of having parental mental health issues turn into your own mental health issues is something I can relate to and sympathize with. Not being able to fully trust yourself and your own senses always gets me. And I am always more afraid of other human beings than I am of unknowable beings from beyond the stars. The unknowable beings are unknowable. That’s fine. I can accept things existing beyond my ken. But human beings seem knowable and are actually unknowable and that’s much, much scarier. Yes, I do have trust issues, why do you ask.
I haven’t actually finished this anthology, it’s a big book, but I’m about halfway through. Although I think it’s very interesting to see all the ways in which Lovecraft has been used as inspiration (notably, the recently released trailer for Divinity feels very timely) there is still a lot of racism and none of the other stories have hit as hard as the rats in the walls.