The Shadow over 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth,' Part III: Third Times The Charming Seaside Town of Fishmen

I never heard of Innsmouth till the day before I saw it for the first and - so far - last time. I was celebrating my coming of age by a tour of New England - sightseeing, antiquarian, and genealogical - and had planned to go directly from ancient Newburyport to Arkham, whence my mother's family was derived. I had no car, but was travelling by train, trolley and motor-coach, always seeking the cheapest possible route. In Newburyport they told me that the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I demurred at the high fare, that I learned about Innsmouth.

Okay, this would have been a perfectly fine beginning without all the nonsense, false starts, and the unnecessary "sound the depths!" and "run silent, run deep," Hellcats of the Navy fury. The title is called The Shadow Over Innsmouth, an ominous enough title, without being all that specific, and the first line here starts answering questions raised by the title, call-response style. Even if the reader has no idea of New England naming conventions of towns, pronounces it 'ply-mouth' instead 'plim-ith,' etc., you'd still get something along the lines of 'hm, The Shadow Over Innsmouth... what's an Innsmouth?' "I never heard of Innsmouth till the day before I saw it for the first and - so far - last time."

See how that flows smoother as a slow seduction into creepiness than having a military attack on a geographical feature? It lets you the narrator is knew nothing about Innsmouth once, too, but learned. See, you've already got someone you can identify with, and a promise of guidance in some nice expositions and foreshadowings (man, I even hate that word now, too) of something off in "and - so far - last."

I also think how quickly the story moves past the reasons for going to Innsmouth is rather deft. A paragraph from now, and we're already going to Innsmouth, premise met. The mundanity of what the narrator is up to helps glide past any questions of what the character supposedly was up to that led to the opening. It isn't a cliche, like a flat tire forcing him to stop, etc., to distract us, but it isn't so interesting it distracts us either. It is a tricky thing, since a lot of the good solutions became cliche for this reason, and for such an old and well-known story, I'm surprised this premise isn't pinched more often.

Oh, not in the specifics... a fractured bildungsroman of a "sightseeing, antiquarian, and genealogical" leasurely trip on the cheap through rural New England screams the certain odd fixations of one Mr. Howard Phillips Lovecraft. While this tale is missing the more easily parodible last sentence pointlessly in italics, things unhelpfully (un)described as at all the wrong angles, and overly Freudian tentacles and ichorous maws, I think one of the things that really works here is the mundane creepiness to Lovecraft Country, and whatever the narrator is up to here is both boring and weird.

But the idea of a story starting in media res the main character's vacation solves a lot of the logistical problems of establishing the character's background and normal routines. This guy doesn't mention his job, his friends, his relationships, not even his freaking name. This guy is on vacation. I mean, his background is he has some ancestors and he doesn't really do anything. What he's doing is bumming around. He accidentally goes to Innsmouth. There is a certain minimalist elegance in that. It isn't until Chapter V, after explicitly mentioning that he decides to quit this trip, that he develops any sort of biography.

So this is the begining of the story proper, and look how tight it is compared to what's come before. The story doesn't get into motion until he stops with the whole "I never heard of Innsmouth" bit. Instead of wasting time coming up with motivations, personality and reasons for him to end up in Innsmouth, to explain how he goes from the ordinary world to smack-dab in the middle of a creepy story, he just gets on a damn bus. The fact that his cousin is in a madhouse or whatever won't matter once he gets to Innsmouth, so why bother wasting time on it?

See, that's a begining. It introduces the character and situation, not tells you a shaggy dog story or hint the rest of the story might be unreliable.