Friday, January 29, 2010

Pickman's Model

I’m a Lovecraft newbie, shameful as it may be to admit, and I really wanted to like my introduction to his work, Pickman’s Model. After all, this story had as its antagonist an artist who paints morbid pictures and who exudes a creepy if not murderous vibe. Anyone familiar with my thesis novel in progress will know that’s a premise I should enjoy, but I have to say that, on the whole, I was not particularly impressed with this piece.

In the early pages, this story had tremendous potential to terrify, but in my view it failed to live up to it. Lovecraft promises much but fails to deliver. First, he introduces a protagonist/narrator with, by his own admission, various eccentricities. This is a character I want to like and to whom I’m immediately sympathetic, but he seems to get lost entirely as the story progresses. Aside from his self declared hero worship of Pickman and his willingness – if not outright eagerness – to accompany him to his near secret studio, we learn very little else about the narrator. Thus, I never felt invested in his fate. I couldn’t care less if he had in fact been hacked to pieces in Pickman’s cellar. (Which, obviously, he was not.)

I felt the same way about Pickman. He never reached monster status, in my estimation, and that’s what Lovecraft set me as the reader up for in the first few pages. He seemed too much like your typical professor of art painting controversial pictures, in the end. I learn much about him and his leanings if not outright deviations, but I never get to see him actually commit any violent acts. Sure, he paints creepy pictures, and maybe he’s made some sort of deal with the Devil, but he doesn’t scare me.

I should insert here that I thought Lovecraft’s descriptions of the Pickman’s various paintings were beautifully rendered. His settings in this piece were also very well realized. Even though I wasn’t emotionally involved in what happened to the characters in each scene, I must admit that Lovecraft did a marvelous job of constructing a backdrop upon which much mayhem could have successfully occurred. But, it never did.

For me, that was the fatal flaw in this piece: the fact that I wasn’t at all interested in the outcome. I never felt genuine fear or revulsion. As the story closes, we as readers don’t receive what I believed Lovecraft dangled in front of us at the onset. I finished reading it and I’m left unclear as to what exactly the narrator still fears. Yes, he saw some seriously disturbed art. He’s spent a spell in a secluded location with a madman, but he’s come to no real harm because of it. He didn’t even have to escape some horrible fate; there was none in store for him. So, in short, I’m not sure what he’s so discombobulated about. Technically, he was never in any danger.

If this piece were submitted by a fellow student in a critique session, I’d have to label it competent but not stirring. Lovecraft’s prose is well crafted, no pun intended, but in my view the story doesn’t live up to its considerable potential. I was left wanting way more. Hopefully, as we continue to read Lovecraft’s works in the Readings in the Genre – Horror course, I’ll have the opportunity to read one I do find to be genuinely frightening.

1 comment:

  1. I feel as though older works can get away with a lot more than we can nowadays. I don't think this would be popular if it were written in 2010, but since it was written back in the day, we're willint to excuse the lack of characterization and the slower pace.

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