Ravening for Delight

Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and the Alien movies all trace their tone of cosmic dread back to the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, whose stories were published in pulp magazines in the 1920s and 30s. Paul La Farge’s latest novel, The Night Ocean, takes Lovecraft as its subject (or one of its subjects): It's a fictionalized investigation into Lovecraft's unusual relationship with one of his fans, a teenager named Robert Barlow.