Can somebody redpill me on this guy?
For all I know he was a science fiction writer, but there are people who literally believe his writtings to be true and developed almost a Crowley tier cult around him and his books?
While looking for his works to start reading I've found several weird books with titles like 'Rite of Yog Sothoth' and other shit that seemed 'serious' from the point of the author.
What's the deal with Lovecraft? Was he crazy?
I'm asking here and not /x/ because I'm approaching this from a non 'ayy lmao' perspective. I mean his writings are fiction, or did he intend those to be ''real''?
>>7880508
>redpill
fuck off. He was a fiction writer who wanted to portray the utter insignificance of humanity in the greater scheme of things. The great old ones were just a metaphor for forces beyond the control of humans. That's why he seldom described his monsters in detail, the details weren't important. The monsters were in many senses just abstract entities outside the realm of human perception who could destroy reality in a wink.
I have a book of his short stories. I try to read one once in a while but I find his writing so awful.
Esotericism and occultism were bigger in the first half of the 20th and especially around Lovecraft's time. Colin Wilson, known occultist and phenomenologist, wrote a Lovecraftian story at the behest of Derleth (called The Mind Parasites actually rules) where Lovecraft turns out to have been right about everything like some kind of seer.. sort of. Gurdjieff is in there, Jung, a hundred other little occult and sorta-occulty things. Wilson is a good example of that milieu.
>>7880541
Form your own opinions, random dude who has unusually strong opinion about prose that coincidentally mirrors common meme opinion of wannabe snobs. Lovecraft's prose being bad is just something people say to seem like they have thoughts on things.
>>7880516
>That's why he seldom described his monsters in detail
This is what happens you get all your Lovecraft knowledge from /tg/ folks.
I've been reading a book of his short stories alongside Beowulf (just got into /lit/) and I find his writing to be great with how descriptive it is. Just finished Herbert West and I'm gonna read Rats In The Walls next. Haven't really read much about the old gods yet except for Dagon(?) and the Egyptian one which was kinda confusing.
>>7880995
>the Egyptian one which was kinda confusing
The Temple?
>>7881001
Nyarthlotep? I'm probably going to reread it to better understand it.
>but there are people who literally believe his writtings to be true and developed almost a Crowley tier cult around him and his books?
what? Source on this? He probably has some wacko fans out there, but.. this? Lolwut?
As for his mental health, he was ... eccentric. His mother raised him rather poorly and unusually, which resulted in a kinda aberrant psyche. The fact that he had a really high IQ probably ddin't make things better. Had he lived now he'd be aptly described with 4chan meme terminology like "sperglord", "autismaloid" etc. But downright clinically insane? No, not quite. Just really, really weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7qQ7A4rWM8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IJovmgDJPY
Would Lovecraft like black-metal?
>>7881705
He'd consider it degenerate.
>>7880910
I have read most of his major novels, his general tendency is to leave most of it to the imagination, except with some certain creatures like Cthulu and Yog-Sothoth and 'lesser' creatures like the deep ones. I feel that colour out of space was the best expression of his style overall.
>>7881018
Same I didn't understand Nyarthlotep but I just finished shadow over innsmouth it was pretty good planning on picking up Call of Cthulhu this week
>>7881786
well to be fair here it made sense The Colour Out of Space. It's a colour that the human mind can't comprehend so he used as many adjectives as he could that weren't comparing it to another colour. That's the reason his work is so unsettling. You can't fully imagine what he's seeing but you understand it completely. He taps into a primal fear of the unknown. Some of his creations come from nightmares he had like Nyarlathotep or the night gaunts.
Read call of cthulu and the rats in the walls. Prefered cthulu desu. Planning on reading the colour out of space next, is this a good plan?
>literally naming the cat in your short story nigger-man
What the ffuck are you doing H.P
>>7882078
> naming your cat nigger-man
that's pretty funny actually
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Creation_of_Niggers
His best work desu
>>7883175
>ywn be clutched and teased by faceless daemons as black as the core of the night in your sleep paralyses
Why even continue this pathetic existence?
>>7881076
>what? Source on this? He probably has some wacko fans out there, but.. this? Lolwut?
Look up Kenneth Grant, a reknowned occultist who was personal friends with Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare. Quick quote from wiki:
>He ended up writing a book 1977, Grant began the second Typhonian Trilogy with Nightside of Eden, in which he discussed some of his own personal magical ideas, outlining magical formulae with which to explore a dark, dense realm that he variously called 'Universe B' and 'the Tunnels of Set', conceived as a 'dark side' of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Grant made connections between this realm and the extramundane deities of H.P. Lovecraft's horror fiction.
>The seventh volume of the Typhonian Trilogies, Outer Gateways, followed in 1994, discussing Grant's ideas of older Typhonian traditions from across the world, with reference to the work of Crowley, Spare, and Lovecraft. It ends with the text of The Wisdom of S'lba, a work that Grant claimed he had received clairvoyantly from a supernatural source.
>>7883380
To be fair Crowley claimed to be close personal friends with just about everybody despite the fact he hadn't even exchanged pleasantries with most of them.
