My favorite Lovecraft story, hmm. Well, “The Lurking Fear” had a prominent and lasting effect on me when I first read it. I still vividly remember both where I was sitting (it was a glass-walled study room at Penn State, on the corner of Henderson Building by the gates), and the image in my head of the guy lying there, half-asleep, with an arm draped over him as the lightning flashes.
On the other hand…
Okay, a bit of a story. A year or so ago, I got my hands on the Lovecraft stories, re-edited by S. T. Joshi. For those of you who don’t know, Lovecraft’s original stories as published in magazines like Weird Tales were heavily edited by August Derleth and published in anthologies after Lovecraft’s death. L. Sprague de Camp, in Lovecraft’s biography, declared that Derleth did an utter hack job and that none of us have any idea of the glory that is Lovecraft in his native form.
Well, around 2000, Joshi went back to Lovecraft’s original published documents, re-edited them and published them in new anthologies (easily spotted on Amazon.com, as S. T. Joshi is listed as co-author or editor). And you know what? De Camp was right. The histrionic italics and purple prose were Derleth, not Lovecraft, and I cannot describe to you how much longer and more unsettling Lovecraft’s unmodified work is.
So, long story short: ”Herbert West: Reanimator” is at least three times as long as the version I’d previously read (about 50 pages!), and possibly the fucking creepiest thing I have ever read. Jeeeeeesus Christ.