HP Lovecraft - Classic Or Dud?

I always got the four Arkham House editions from the library when I was a kid- The Dunwich Horror and Others, At the Mountains of Madness, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, and The Horror In the Museum and Other Revisions. The current Penguin Classics (3 volumes) are pretty great, still under Joshi's stewardship, and AFAIK just as complete (albeit without the revisions and collaborations).

http://www.hippocampuspress.com/h.p-lovecraft/fiction/variorum-lovecraft

This is the definitive edition, there will be cheaper paperback versions eventually.

Friends used to live near a sex shop called Lovecraft. Not very appealing. Now it's a deli, which is also unappealing because just how clean or those surfaces really?

I dig the annotated versions from ST Joshi

Has anybody read Victor Lavelle's "Ballad of Black Tom"? I really dug it. Much like Mat Johnson's _Pym_, you have modern black American writers taking some of HPL's really racist-ass shit and repurposing/reclaiming it to both comment on how fucked it was but also function as cosmic horror itself.

Here's Victor on Fresh Air a coupla months back:

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/29/468558238/the-ballad-of-black-tom-offers-a-tribute-and-critique-of-lovecraft

Yeah, I read it. It was good but too short. Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country is superficially related, and also well worth reading - one of the best books I've read so far this year, in fact.

https://www.cnet.com/news/hagfish-spill-oregon-highway-101-slime-eels/

Turns out "Cthulhu fthagn!" is the sound of him sneezing on the highway.

This adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward as a podcast series is fun. It’s a bit cackhanded in places, which is inevitable, and suffers from English actors doing American accents a bit, but it’s otherwise pretty good i think.

i see with interest that the sound engineer is David Thomas. That’s surely a fairly common name, but when I see it was recorded in Brighton and Leeds where DT of Pere Ubu lives, it does make me wonder.

nope different guy. obviously.

David Thomas lives in Leeds??!!?

ffs Lewes. autocorrect.

Phew, I wondered if the old fella had taken leave of his senses.

i think i was the one who had taken leave of my senses thinking that an old cantankerous and ill rock musician would be doing sound engineering for a bbc radio series.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/cms/attachment/65a792d7-c485-4b78-b428-916f62ead13e/rspb20182792f03.gif

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.2792

Sollasina cthulhu! so cute!

....two columns of four adradial plates each and nine plated tube feet per ambulacral area; plates of non-peristomial tube feet arranged in longitudinal rows; aboral thecal plates with strong granular ornamentation.

accursed!

Awww, who's a cute little Old One?

Yes but did they worship shoggoths
https://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/Scientists-say-monster-penguin-once-swam-New-14302988.php

Racist. Bad writer. Inspiration for the most annoying nerd kitsch milieu. Dud.

I agree with half of that but still classic.

I have read at least two and possibly more stories of his held out to me by a fan as “one of the good ones” or “the best one” and they have been bad. I don’t get it!

I shan’t be reading more but I’m generally curious why ppl think he’s good not bad.

I agree with half of that but still classic.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, March 13, 2020

OTM

afaik why he's good not bad, HPL is to "cosmic horror" as chuck berry is to rock'n'roll. personally creepy, almost unbearably corny, and unassailably classic bc he invented that shit. the genre as we know it would be unimaginable without him.

possibly dud for loosing ST Joshi upon the world

Great synthesiser of various strands of horror. Beautiful imagery, especially the labyrinthian quality, gnarliness and the wet darkness (this is often where he beats writers who try to do his thing). His emphasis on a kind of horrific transcendence.
His essay "Supernatural Horror In Literature" is extremely important in mapping and preserving the genre.

The annoyances in his writing is just something I've grown to expect from a lot of genres I'm into. Most of the comics I like are burdened with deeply flawed writing. Clark Ashton Smith, William Hope Hodgson and Bram Stoker can be similarly challenging at times, sometimes for different flaws. Brilliance doesn't always come with consistently good writing, sadly.
One of my least favorite things about his writing is something a lot of people tend to praise: the stories in a journal or correspondence mode get bogged down in boring details.

I'm not interested in Joshi's criticism anymore but he does help a lot of writers I'm interested in get their books printed.

rogermexico otm

Yup

But what in the text is good

Like idk Poe invented detectives but Holmes is orders of magnitude better than Dupin, surely, to the point where Dupin is a curiosity for the learned.

Confidential to darragh I am not trolling, this is not trolling

I did recently read Poe's Dupin story "Marie Roget" and that was stunningly boring. Some of the Dupin stories are very clever but I never felt it was anywhere near his best.

'The Colour Out Of Space' was pretty unfocused and kind of dragged for a movie under two hours but it did look pretty sometimes.

I think Shadow over Innsmouth is great. Lovecraft doles out information so the reader identifies with the narrator as they both make new discoveries. This identification means the final twist is genuinely shocking, creepy, and unnerving as if it is happening TO THE READER. This, to me, seems to be a major, not minor innovation/achievement, though I haven't read any real predecessors except Poe.

Dismissing Lovecraft because of his writing is similar to people who dismiss Tolkien because he didn't write real characters and say Game of Thrones is more modern and "better." They are foundational and their antiquarian ways are part of their charm.

I’m not charmed by poor writing. His fans admit he’s a poor stylist and I’m like…ok…

There is more to writing than style.

In this guy’s case I can’t get past it. Anyway post spoilers if you’re gonna talk about the twist being good imo like I said I’m not giving it another go personally.

But I shouldn’t try to argue really

SPOILERS TO 90 YEAR OLD BOOK: Narrator recounts his visit to creepy New England port town where he discovers stories of the Deep Ones, a race of fishy humanoids who live in the sea and breed with humans. The half-breeds start out mostly human and become progressively more fishy as they age. Narrator narrowly escapes the town as he is chased by Deep Ones and their cult. Years later, narrator finds his ancestors came from the town and he notices not so subtle changes in his appearance. Narrator accepts his transformation and returns to the town to swim beneath the sea with his Deep One brethren forever more.

His fans admit he’s a poor stylist and I’m like…ok…

― silby, Saturday, March 14, 2020 1:14 PM

Not really. Despite some awkwardness that gets to be a pain and an over-usage of certain words, I think he's a good stylist; the atmosphere and gnarly ornamental physicality of the prose is a big part of what makes the stories beautiful and memorable. I find it amazing that some "fans" miss this but a lot of fantasy fans want their prose as transparent as possible and think Joss Whedon is exemplary. Yet I don't think he would be nearly so popular if he'd gone for a plain style.

I haven't read everything yet but I think Innsmouth is one of his greatest achievements.

counterpoint: he only used the word squamous once but the world never shuts up abt it

i'm in the "important figure couldn't write for fuck" camp and have always found him exhausting (joshi is worse tho lol): a reason why he counts as "important (if unreadable)" is that his descriptions (even and perhaps especially the bad ones) created lots of unrealised visualisable space for comic book art which took his ball and ran with it (in less racist directions) (mostly)

Lovecraft’s prose style is kinda like Kirby’s drawing style imo - full of force and power and barely able to contain groundbreaking ideas, sort of crude and rough and bizarrely grotesque, but also capable of beauty and awe. both foundational figures.

(running w mark s ref to comics there)

Technically both did a lot of things “wrong”, but it doesnt matter ultimately

I know that he didnt use sqamous much but then his fans read his letters too and he might have used it more in them.

The visuals were already there in many cases. Again, "Shadow Over Innsmouth" is lovely.

Even worse: I fear that many fantasy readers get impatient with visual description and carefully created textures and believe that's what movie adaptations are there for.

Also should have noted one of his greatest strengths: descriptions of settings. MMmmmm… terraces and gambrel roofs.

That's one area even a lot of my favorite writers disappoint me. But I don't feel I can give examples until I've read at least the majority of any given writer.

at Hoover Dam recently I had the experience of sighting down a massive structure with angles that were just a little wrong. it’s disorienting af

Of Lovecraft’s antecedents - Poe is def a better stylist, but his ideas are more earthbound. Dunsany is unreadable imo. Machen is frustrating. RW Chambers is occasionally incredible, but v inconsistent. Lovecraft surpasses them all.