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Cool Air

 Cool Air by HP Lovecract.  Let me start with I do not condone Lovecraft’s racism.  In this story it is ever present in his distaste of ‘the dirty Spaniards.’  I will from time to time read a Lovecraft story, but I enjoy the stories inspired by Lovecraft’s stories and monsters far better than the original works.

I usually classify this story as a mummy story if anything.  It’s about a guy who has to find cheap lodgings and lives in a poorer part of New York City.  Where he befriends an old doctor.  And in time he discovers why the doctor’s apartment is cold and why it smells.

This is one of the few stories that Lovecraft wrote that doesn’t have a creature of his imagining.  That is what makes the story unique.  There is no dream sequence.  No unearthly monsters.  The story reads more like one of his contemporaries.


Cool Air was published in 1928.  The audioprogram I listened to was narrated by Michael Troy.  The narrator spent three minutes summarizing the story.  Which, I felt was completely unnecessary.  It’s like he doesn’t trust the listener to get it.  After the short story, he started to give a short biography of Lovecraft, which I didn’t feel the need to listen to.  I have a sneaky feeling the narrator is the kind of guy who would mansplain things to women at comic-cons.

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