H.P. Lovecraft’s claimed that his celebrated novelette, The Rats In The Walls, was “too horrible for the tender sensibilities of a delicately nurtured publick.”
The Weird Tales editor, who accepted it, described it as the best his magazine had ever received.
Its publication inspired Robert E. Howard to write to the magazine and that letter was passed on to Lovecraft.
Kingsley Amis described The Rats In The Walls as having “a memorable nastiness.”
And Lovecraft scholar, S.T. Joshi, described it this way: The Rats In The Walls is “a nearly flawless example of the short story in its condensation, its narrative pacing, its thunderous climax, and its mingling of horror and poignancy.”
I call it awesome. How can you not love words like “Obscure rodent manifestations” all strung together? Or this sentence:
“Sir William, standing with his searchlight in the Roman ruin, translated aloud the most shocking ritual I have ever known; and told of the diet of the antediluvian cult which the priests of Cybele found and mingled with their own.”
Protecting Project Pulp No. 47 – The Rats In The Walls
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by James Silverstein
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 1 Minute [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Protecting Project Pulp
Podcast: June 3, 2013
Delapore, a Virginian, recounts the events which occurred after takes up residence in his ancestor’s feudal English seat. First published in Weird Tales, March 1924.
Posted by Jesse Willis
