C
Beyond the Wall of Sleep feels like a second attempt to capture an idea of dreams revealing a greater world to those who can perceive it; an idea that was toyed with in his previous story, Polaris. While I do find this story more compelling, it’s marred by a fairly underwhelming climax in which the entity gives some vague notion of the star Algol being a cosmic oppressor before creating a nova (which was based on a real nova that was recorded in the early 1900s), as well as the absurd casual racism in the description of the narrator’s patient. This is the first of his stories where Lovecraft’s infamous racism is so blatant in its presentation, and it makes it all the more difficult to separate the art from the artist.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep feels like a second attempt to capture an idea of dreams revealing a greater world to those who can perceive it; an idea that was toyed with in his previous story, Polaris. While I do find this story more compelling, it’s marred by a fairly underwhelming climax in which the entity gives some vague notion of the star Algol being a cosmic oppressor before creating a nova (which was based on a real nova that was recorded in the early 1900s), as well as the absurd casual racism in the description of the narrator’s patient. This is the first of his stories where Lovecraft’s infamous racism is so blatant in its presentation, and it makes it all the more difficult to separate the art from the artist.