Volumes of Forgotten Lore

From my beloved Grauniad this weekend, I recommend Michell Houellebecq's interesting article on Lovecraft, which elegantly brought to prominence, the arbitrary nature of evil in HPL's works and the meaningless of death. This seems to me to provide an antithesis to Dracula, where the supernatural evil of the Count is directly countered by the sure and certain presence of the divine. For example when Mina Harker is partially possessed by the Count, van Helsing places the conscerated host on her forehead and the Body of Christ burns her and marks her with a scar - proof positive that supernatural evil is offset by supernatural good with the burn proving good to be the greater power and, of course, the implicit endoursement of Catholicism and transubstantiation.

All of this is probably somewhat less shocking in the age of modern horror flicks - what with the best of them heirs to Lovecraft's spiritual post modernism, where characters commit acts of arbitrary evil and are unswayed by the power of the cross and the One True God - but hey, go back to the source, the welspring, the foundation that is HPL. Read the originals. Surprise your jaded selves and most of all, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.