December 21, 2004 @ 1:30 pm

Wow. I picked up the new McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, mostly for the new stories by Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Poppy Z. Brite, but it turns out there are a whole bunch of other great authors with new shorts in it. The best one (so far) is "The Fabled Light-house of Viña del Mar," by Joyce Carol Oates. Oates is another of my favorite writers, though this is the first overt horror story I’ve read by her. (She has a collection of horror stories called Night-side, but I’ve never been able to find it, new or used.) I was also pleasantly surprised to find that "Light-house" wasn’t just horror but Lovecraftian horror.
Having been in the company of those who write such fiction (and for some of them, it’s the only thing they write), I can say that this story is one of the finest I’ve read in years. It stands on its own as a solid horror tale without having to support itself on the many Lovecraftian tropes which have become tired and cliché through overuse. My main problem with Lovecraft-lit has always been its lack of originality. Most of the stuff published under the auspice of "Lovecraftian fiction" is little more than the literary equivalent of TV fan-fiction, with amateurish writers spinning unoriginal tales that are quickly and happily devoured by other amateurish writers who in turn form communities on the web for the proliferation of … well, a lot of bad writing. (The picture that comes to mind is of a small biodome in the desert where the inhabitants subsist on the same bland, recycled air and food every day.) Those people should read Oates’s "Light-house" and see how a talented writer does it different and does it well.
Ian


