Reaction
Lovecraft took pride in "The Dunwich Horror", calling it "so fiendish that Farnsworth Wright may not dare to print it." Wright, however, snapped it up, sending Lovecraft a cheque for $240, equal to $2800 in modern dollars, the largest single payment for his fiction he had received up to that point.
Lovecraft biographer Lin Carter calls the story "an excellent tale.... A mood of tension and gathering horror permeates the story, which culminates in a shattering climax". Robert M. Price declares that "among the tales of H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Dunwich Horror' remains my favorite."
S. T. Joshi, on the other hand, regards "Dunwich" as "simply an aesthetic mistake on Lovecraft's part", citing its "stock good-versus-evil scenario".
Read more about this topic: The Dunwich Horror
Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)
“Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)