An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

In gratitude for Carter’s assistance, the entire army of ghouls and nightgaunts agrees to accompany Carter in approaching the Great Ones in their castle and making a plea for his sunset city. Flying over Leng and Inganok, they see Kadath looming in front of them—a mountain of almost inconceivable height, with the Great Ones’ castle on top. They begin an ascent, but after a time Carter notices that the night-gaunts are no longer flapping their wings: a “force not of earth” has seized the army and is bearing it up to the castle. Swept into the castle, Carter finds to his amazement that the place is entirely empty and dark, except for one small light that glowed from a tower room. Then a “daemon trumpet” blasts three times, and Carter notices that he is now alone—the ghouls and night-gaunts have disappeared. Accompanied by an array of “giant black slaves,” a “tall, slim figure with the young face of an antique Pharaoh” approaches him. It is Nyarlathotep, “messenger of the Other Gods,” and he speaks at length to Carter. The Great Ones, the gods of earth, have deserted their castle to dwell amidst Carter’s own sunset city, and this is why he himself is denied it in his dreams. But what is that sunset city? Nyarlathotep tells him:

“For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth. It is the glory of Boston’s hillside roofs and western windows aflame with sunset; of the flower-fragrant Common and the great dome on the hill and the tangle of gables and chimneys in the violet valley where the many-bridged Charles flows drowsily. These things you saw, Randolph Carter, when your nurse first wheeled you out in the springtime, and they will be the last things you will ever see with eyes of memory and of love….

“…These, Randolph Carter, are your city; for they are yourself. New-England bore you, and into your soul she poured a liquid loveliness which cannot die. This loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and polished by years of memory and dreaming, is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to find that marble parapet with curious urns and carven rail, and descend at last those endless balustraded steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood.”

What Carter must do is to go back to his sunset city and urge the Great Ones to return to their castle. Nyarlathotep provides Carter with a shantak to take him back, and they fly off. But Carter becomes aware that it is all a trick: the shantak plunges him “through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in darkness” and is heading toward the great throne of Azathoth in “those inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time.” It then occurs to Carter that all he has to do is

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wake up in his Boston room, leave dreamland behind, and take cognizance of the beauty to be found on his doorstep. He does so, and Nyarlathotep’s plan to destroy Carter and deprive him of his sunset city is foiled.

While writing the story, HPL expressed considerable doubts about its merits: “I…am very fearful that Randolph Carter’s adventures may have reached the point of palling on the reader; or that the very plethora of weird imagery may have destroyed the power of any one image to produce the desired impression of strangeness” ( SL2.94). And elsewhere: “Actually, it isn’t much good; but forms useful practice for later and more authentic attempts in the novel form” ( SL2.95). The novel has, indeed, inspired highly contradictory judgments, some HPL enthusiasts finding it almost unreadable and others, like L.Sprague de Camp ( Lovecraft: A Biography[Doubleday, 1975], p. 280), comparing it to the Alicebooks and the fantasies of George MacDonald.