MixedTor.comI’m about equally divided between \'Wow!\' and \'Whoa!\' ... As an actual toiler in the fields of mental health, and specifically the fields of Butler Hospital, how can I not be taken aback by the representation (albeit fictional) of one of our nurses betraying patient confidentiality? ... I think that’s leading me into my main \'Wow!\' for Night-Gaunts, which is, the night-gaunts ... These, as I read them, are brilliant representations of disease as demon ... I’m not sure what to make of the pseudo-biographical nature of Night-Gaunts ... who’s the imagined reader for all this? I couldn’t tell whether I was meant to be a Lovecraftian scholar...or should I have been someone with only casual knowledge of the real biography, assuming Horace’s abuse and supernatural experiences as only lightly fictionalized? Or—Oates has readers coming from the literary fiction genre as well as horror—what would a reader entirely unaware of Lovecraft’s life get out of Night-Gaunts?
