Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Quest of Iranon

Quite an interesting and lore building story.  From the preface to the story it seems as though Lovecraft was very proud of the language of this story, but what goes far beyond the language is the depth of character and world building.

The story follows a young man named Iranon who is looking for the city of his youth.  He tells everyone he meets that he is a Prince of Aira, and he is trying to find that city once more. He travels around and sees all of the world, and even though he is young, he experiences much, that is until the twist at the end.

I would portend that Iranon is actually the narrator of most of Lovecraft’s stories.  He tells of Sarnath, he tells of ancient cities in Egypt (the nameless city), and other strange locals.  He strangely doesn’t remember when these visits happened or much about them, just that he has been there.

Then at the end of the story we find out that he is much, much older than we initially thought (in fact much older than he himself thinks), and that there is a certain amount of madness in his personality.

Then we couple that with the fact that we very nearly never hear a narrators name, they just tell the story.  The narrators of the stories we see all are unreliable, which partners with the madness of Iranon.

The world of Lovecraft just keeps getting better and better.

Join me next Tuesday for “The Crawling Chaos” blind read through.