The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
Published 1928 · 161,182 words · about 14 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Horror, Short Stories, Gothic Fiction
How hard is The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories to read?
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories scores 73 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 78 out of 100
- The text, being an academic commentary, is rich with specialized terminology from literary criticism, anthropology, history, and science (e.g., 'hypotaxis,' 'abiogenesis,' 'theosophy,' 'cetology,' 'heptarchy,' 'trapezohedron'). It frequently cites archaic spellings and foreign terms (e.g., 'Cyclopean,' 'Regnum Congo,' 'Ex nihilo nihil fit,' 'Mi-Gö,' 'kallikantzaros,' 'crux ansata'). Readers will encounter many unfamiliar words and concepts, similar to the density found in *Gravity's Rainbow*.
- Sentence structure: 70 out of 100
- The prose features long, complex sentences with multiple clauses, parenthetical explanations, and extensive use of academic citation formats. While not reaching the extreme hypotaxis of Henry James or Faulkner, the sentences often demand careful parsing to follow the detailed arguments and historical contexts. This sustained complexity places it above *2666* in terms of grammatical demands.
- Abstraction: 75 out of 100
- The text primarily deals with theoretical and analytical concepts, discussing literary influences, philosophical underpinnings, and the evolution of Lovecraft's themes and mythos. It moves beyond concrete narrative to explore the abstract ideas behind the stories, such as 'existential abstraction' and 'metaphysics,' akin to the philosophical debates embedded in *Brothers Karamazov*.
- Information density: 82 out of 100
- Each paragraph is packed with names, dates, literary allusions, biographical details, and critical interpretations, requiring high attention to track the numerous connections and references. The sheer volume of concepts, historical facts, and intertextual links presented per page is demanding, making it comparable to the encyclopedic nature of *War and Peace* or *Ulysses* in its density of reference.
- Narrative indirection: 70 out of 100
- Lovecraft frequently employs narrators whose perceptions are limited or compromised by madness, requiring readers to infer the true nature of cosmic horrors. 'The Call of Cthulhu' exemplifies this, piecing together a terrifying reality from fragmented notes, dreams, and disparate accounts. The annotations for 'The Outsider' highlight its 'seemingly 'irrational' elements' and 'endlessly interpretable' nature, placing it higher than 'The Great Gatsby' in requiring reader assembly of meaning.
- Symbolic density: 78 out of 100
- Lovecraft's fiction is rich with recurring motifs and entities that function as symbols for humanity's cosmic insignificance and the horror of the unknown. Figures like Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep, as discussed in the annotations, embody abstract dread rather than coherent personalities, akin to the multi-layered symbolism of 'Moby-Dick'. The pervasive themes of forbidden knowledge and ancient evils consistently point to meanings beyond literal events.
- Ironic distance: 68 out of 100
- While many narrators are earnest, Lovecraft occasionally employs authorial ironic distance, as explicitly noted in the annotations for 'The Hound,' which is described as 'obvious self-parody' written 'with tongue in cheek.' This deliberate subversion of bombastic rhetoric, coupled with an overarching cosmic irony regarding human endeavors, creates a gap between surface narrative and deeper meaning, though less pervasive than in 'Ulysses'.
- Resolution withholding: 85 out of 100
- Lovecraft consistently denies readers comforting closure, often concluding stories with profound ambiguity, the narrator's descent into madness, or the lingering threat of cosmic entities. 'The Call of Cthulhu' ends with an unshakeable dread and the implication of future horrors, leaving core mysteries unsolved similar to 'The Crying of Lot 49'. This pervasive resistance to definitive answers is a hallmark of his work.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- Lovecraft's narratives, while often first-person, frequently employ structural devices that enhance complexity. 'The Call of Cthulhu' is a prime example, built from fragmented documents and multiple perspectives across time and place. The frequent use of unreliable narrators, whose sanity deteriorates, further complicates the interpretive task, placing it above the simple retrospection of 'The Great Gatsby'.
How The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories is regarded
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories holds a literary regard score of 71 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.