I've re-read the Silmarillion in a spur of new interest, and have read quite a few of the stories on the Dreams in the Witchhouse and Other Weird Stories Lovecraft collection by penguin.
I liked Dream Quest to Unknown Kadath, but it seemed to be begging to be more thoroughly fleshed out. It seems Lovecraft packed so much creative juice into so few pages... The thing itself is also difficult to make sense of sometimes, especially given that it conflicts with mostly every story that was published before it. Many locations that he now placed at the Dreamworlds were already established to reside on the Real World, and as such, the story itself works as a reboot of the Mythos, although he DID think of creating something to justify the presence of locations on both the real world and the dream world - in some places, they mingle together, and a dream traveller can go to the real world and vice versa...
Overall, i really enjoyed seeing Randolph Carter in action again, although, as i have said, i think Lovecraft packed too much creative juice into too few pages, and the story itself lacked a bit of developing. Randolph literally goes ALL OVER the dreamworld over the course of 120 pages. He goes to the Moon, to the Abyss, to Celephaïs, Kadath, Ulthar and the surrounding regions, etc... And he tried to describe it's residents, fauna, & flora, but his attempt to bring verossimility to the world pales in comparison to the efforts of, for example, George R. Martin and Tolkien.
Of course, this is a result of the conditions that lovecraft himself had to face on the real real world... No money, his stories were his bread, and had to be marketeable. Dream Quest wasn't readily accepted for publication, as wasn't his previous (and in my opinion, best that i've read so far) story, At the Mountains of Madness.
My opinion of Lovecraft, as i read his stories from start to finish, goes from brilliant to mediocre. A story he ghostwrote, Under the Pyramids, for example, is pretty brilliant, as is At the Mountains of Madness and The Colour out of Space. But "The Other Gods", "The Moon-Bog", and many others, are pretty mediocre, and the plot, if you can call it that, could have been thought of by a 5 year old without much effort on his part.
Actually, i dislike most of his "Dunsanian" stories, into which he tries to mimick his idol. The White Ship, Celephaïs and many others, are good, but not brilliant in any case. He was best when the source of his inspiration was Poe, and you can clearly see it in stories like The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which is simply BRILLIANT, and The Thing in the Doorstep, as well as Shadow over Innsmouth, Call of Ctulhu, and other classic mythos related suspense/horror stories.
I really wished Lovecraft had received appropriate funding, and could produce his work without being subject to time and monetary constraints. It just seems to me that his creative genius was too bullied into submission, and eventually got lost somewhat in his later stories. Although he still managed gems like The Shadow out of Time. It would've been nice if he didn't seek to profit on his writing, and instead took his time, like tolkien did, depending financially on other activities, but his genius was that type that cant really be contained and not presented into public for too long. His life was a short but productive one, and i'm thinking now of pursuing some other Mythos writers that took up his mantle after his death.
Who knows, maybe i'll even write some...
