TSOU - The Night Ocean
vonj...@hotmail.com
"The Night Ocean"
Sources: _The Horror in the Museum_, Arkham; _The Loved Dead_, Carroll and
Graf.
Synopsis: The narrator is an artist who, after completing a mural for
a contest, decides to take a vacation in an isolated beach near Ellston.
He spends the summer there, and slowly the ocean and sky lead him to an
introspective and somber mood. Over time, a series of odd events begin
to happen - he finds an odd carved bead on the beach, he sees figures
standing at the water's edge during a storm, and finally the arrival of
a inhuman figure swimming through the water and then loping across the
shore. But the sea keeps its secrets, and the narrator is left with no
explanation for these mysterious visions.
Comments: Wow. I read this a long time ago, and found it curious that
I couldn't remember the plot. After reading it again, I knew - this was
Lovecraft's most successful attempt to subvert plot entirely to
atmosphere, turning the entire piece to a prose poem of incredible
beauty. Others might find it to be entirely too purple, but I found it
breathtaking in its detail and how it conveys the quiet and solitude the
narrator feels in his cabin on the edge of the world.
This story was written by Lovecraft and Robert H. Barlow, with whom
Lovecraft had already collaborated on "The Battle that Ended the
Century", "Collapsing Cosmoses", and "Till A' The Seas". It would seem
that Barlow had really come along as a fiction writer since then, as
this piece is of an entirely different and more philosophical character
than all of these. The original manuscript has been lost, but Joshi
believes that Barlow and Lovecraft had equal hands in this tale. (I
will, however, continue to think of "The Night Ocean" as the Master's
swan song.) "The Night Ocean" was published in the Winter 1936 issue
of the Californian, where Barlow had placed a previous work of fiction.
This piece really couldn't be called a Mythos story; those looking for
links might be able to point to a few comparisons to "The Shadow over
Innsmouth", but that is to reduce the tale to its bare bones. I leave
you with this thought: this tale is certainly not for all of
Lovecraft's fans, differing as it does from most of his other works.
However, if you ever find yourself growing weary of Lovecraft's plots,
his narrators who only realize their doom too late, his tongue-twisting
monsters and curious aliens from outside, and need a mirror for the
loneliness that all of us feel at times, pick up "The Night-Ocean".
You won't regret it.
Chat to be announced by Steven Kaye. Next week, school's out. It's
been fun for the past four years, but all good things must end.
Hopefully someone out there will give us all something else to amuse
ourselves with. Bye!
Yrs.,
Daniel Harms
http://members.tripod.com/~danharms/
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