It might be some sort of irony, that Herbert West - Reanimator is one of the better-known stories Lovecraft wrote despite he apparently wasn't too thrilled about it himself. The story was originally published as a serial, with cliffhanger endings and a poorly written summary kicking off each new chapter. As Lovecraft stated, he detested the style and he only wrote it because he got 5 dollars from each chapter. S.T. Joshi, the scholar and critic of Lovecraft has even gone as far as claiming Herbert West as Lovecraft's poorest work. While I wouldn't go that far, it's obvious that Lovecraft is clearly writing in a style that doesn't suit him, which results in a clunky narrative despite the premise is a somewhat intriguing Frankenstein pastiche.
As so often was Lovecraft's custom, Herbert West - Reanimator is narrated from a perspective of an unnamed individual, who at the beginning of the story is a schoolmate of Herbert West at the Miskatonic University medical department. West was by then known for his outlandish theories, which lead to the deaths of several lab animals in his attempts at trying to resurrect them. Fascinated by West, the narrator becomes his loyal assistant and together they manage to find a body to experiment in secret as the medical staff of the school forbode West from continuing his trials after he insisted on moving on to humans.
In an abandoned farmhouse the duo finally tests the new serum concocted by West. After waiting a while, they conclude the test has failed and promptly retreat into another room to make a new mixture when suddenly an inhuman scream cuts the darkness. They escape the place and the next morning they read unsettling news from the papers: the farmhouse had burnt down and in the graveyard, a grave they had dug the corpse from and re-filled, had claw marks, like someone trying to dig down to it by hands, all around it.
A bit later, a typhoid epidemic hits the city of Arkham. This gives West and his biggest fan ample time to test their serum, as there are corpses plenty and no one has time to check what two students are doing. They see some successes, like corpses opening their eyes, but their major breakthrough happens, when the dean of the school Dr Halsey dies of typhoid. The lads dig up his corpse, West thinking it to be fresh enough and pump it full of serum.
What wakes up is far from the gentle doctor Halsey was known as. He becomes a bloodthirsty monster, who begins a bloody rampage until he is finally caught and committed into the insane asylum. The people around believe the resemblance of the madman and the good doctor to be a freak of nature.
After graduating, the two doctors settle in the city of Bolton, where they open a practice suited for their sinister needs. A great breakthrough happens, when an illegal boxing match results in the death of a boxer. This is also a chapter where Lovecraft's racist tendencies flare-up in earnest with his description of the black boxer. So, rinse repeat, pump a corpse full of serum, nothing happens, ditch the corpse and something horrible happens, this time in the form of a child gone missing. Guess who has eaten the kid. In the end, West shoots the undead boxer.
Sometime after the boxer incident, the narrator returns back to the clinic after some well earned R&R from being an aide of a mad scientist. He is surprised to learn, that during his absence, West has invented a super embalming fluid which he has already used on a fresh corpse he claimed just happened to drop on his lap in a form of a traveller, who just by happenstance died of a heart attack while asking a route from him.
Oblivious to all things fishy, the narrator helps West to revive the man, who begins to show some good signs of being alive. At first the former cadaver mouths unintelligible words, but as his final act, he screams out the horrible secret everyone besides the narrator had already guessed.
It was a happy day for Herbert West when the 1st World War broke up. He, with the narrator in tow, promptly enlisted through the Canadian forces and heads on to Europe to experiment on some freshly lain cadavers coming at them en masse. Like a kid in a candy shop, West did his thing on all kinds of body parts in order to see how they'd function without a brain. Because of course, he did, being a mad scientist type.
The big breakthrough for the dynamic medical duo takes place when a plane carrying a doctor known by both of them crashes, providing them with a fresh, handsome, albeit headless corpse. West sticks the head in a box and they proceed to pump the body full of all kinds of serums. It hops alive, reaching something unseen. Then a voice is carried from the box, begging for the pilot of the plane to jump. And as luck has it, a bomb rips the military lab apart, ending that experiment.
A year after returning home from the war, West has new digs connected to an ancient catacomb. At his house, he and the narrator keep (by this point, I am suspicious of the real nature of their relationship) at their most important experiments at making corpses flutter and scream. Hobbies are important.
Things change when West happens to read a newspaper article about a riot that took place in an insane asylum. There a group led by a man with a wax head sprung lose the madman, who killed plenty of men after the typhoid epidemic a couple of chapters ago. This renders west into an almost catatonic state until a doorbell is rung and the narrator receives a large box addressed to West. As the box claims to contain the psycho killer, the boys decide to incinerate it.
As they are burning the box, the wall separating the house of West and the catacomb begins to crumble and a monstrous regiment enters the cellar they are in. You can take a guess who they are. In any case, they go and rip the good doctor West apart and the only thing left for the narrator is to claim he had zilch to do with the disappearance of Herbert West. Cops are suspicious, I'd be as well, as it does stink like a crime of passion. Sure officer, the man I was bunking with just went and disappeared. Went to get cigarettes and never came back, I tell you. I never clobbered him and pushed him in that huge oven.
When you read the story, it is easy to see why it doesn't quite work. The serialized nature it was originally released in doesn't suit well the skill set Lovecraft's. The longer the tale goes, the more ridiculous tones it gets, rendering it into more of a parody, that doesn't quite know that it is a parody. What really makes the story struggle, even further, are the recaps on each chapter and the necessity to end with a cliffhanger. The style fits poorly for Lovecraft and on horror in general.
The story isn't all bad though, as elements of it are quite entertaining. It just is obvious, that had Lovecraft written the chapters as separate short horror pieces instead of forced longer serial tales, they could have worked better.
Now you might ask if the story is rather poorly written, why did I claim it as one of Lovecraft's better-known works. The answer is adaptations. There is the cult classic horror movie series, Reanimator directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Jeffrey Combs as West. It has also been adapted into several comic books, including Army of Darkness (you know, Evil Dead) crossover. The character of Dr Herbert West has also found his way in games, music, radio plays, books written by other writers and so on.
Is it then irony, that a story disliked by its creator and that was created only because of money, has ended up as one of his better-known tales despite the adaptations of it has been less than faithful to it? In the end, Lovecraft might have been happy if the story had turned into a moneymaker during his lifetime, quality be damned.
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