Fred Chappell, the great writer and teacher, died on January 4, 2024. Chappell wrote in a number of genres, but the one that I was most interested in was Chappell’s stories of Lovecraft pastiches. I’ve mentioned Chappell’s “The Adder” in several posts. It’s one of the most convincing and terrifying Lovecraftean stories I’ve ever read.
Dagon was first published in 1968. Dagon was awarded the Best Foreign Book by the French Academy. In 2009, Boson Books reprinted Dagon and its story of a man who encounters one of Lovecraft’s Gods. Dagon presides over the Deep Ones, a hidden amphibious humanoid race that resides in the Earth’s oceans, and is worshipped by the Esoteric Order of Dagon, a secret cult based in Innsmouth. He is the consort of Mother Hydra.
Peter Leland inherits a farm and discovers he has some very strange neighbors. In a series of chilling scenes, Leland slowly finds himself in the grip of a power that takes over his world. Leland doesn’t realize it, but readers recognize the eerie power of Dagon is at work.
With almost psychedelic intensity Chappell’s prose maps the Fate of Leland as he changes and declines into state that prepares him for a meeting with Dagon. If you’re in the mood for a mysterious and sinister encounter with one of Lovecraft’s fiendish Gods, give Dagon a try. GRADE: B
Chappell and Ramsey Campbell are my usual citations of good writers who were doing Lovecraftian work in the ’60s. (I am aware of others who were doing less interesting, or wholly uninteresting, work thus.) And Campbell’s was mostly his just-post-juvenilia, though good for that.
Todd, I’m with you on Chappell and Ramsey Campbell. Lovecraft pastiches have become a cottage industry with several small presses publishing anthologies on a regular basis. Major publishers dabble in Lovecraft pastiches, too.
I thought October was Lovecraft Season, but this is not the first we’ve had lately. Are there just so many that it spills over into the rest of the year?
Jeff, more Lovecraft pastiches seem to be published almost every month of the year now. I featured DAGON because Fred Chappell died recently.
My introduction to Lovecraft was an anthology of pastiches back in the mid seventies. It was years before I could track down a collection of stories written by the man himself. Despite the (justifiable) push back against the man for his racism a few years ago his work is probably more popular now than ever. Horror readers strike me as being able to acknowledge the man’s failings and the problematic aspects of his work while also acknowledging the value in what he did create. I’m not familiar with Cappell but I’ll keep my eyes open for his work.
Byron, I highly recommend Fred Chappell’s More Shapes Than One which includes the shocking story “The Adder.” Once you read it, you won’t soon forget it.
I’d definitely recommend the documentary about Chappell and featuring him as a direct participant linked in this blogpost, despite the notable foolishness I cite at one point on the part of the documentarians.
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2024/01/ssw-fred-chappells-2-earliest-published.html
MORE SHAPES THAN ONE is the first book of his I picked up.