Is HP Lovecraft a meme or does he actually write decent stuff?
I've only read The Shadow Over Innsmouth and it's pretty good. There's some goofy shit because it was written nearly 100 years ago, however. For example, the main character notices that everyone in the town of Innsmouth looks kind of funny, so he assumes that racial degeneration had taken the town by storm.
Still, it's good, and I would imagine that he wrote some other good stories. The Shadow Over Innsmouth actually succeeded at creeping me out at the end.
>>8018226
Best horror writer ever.
There's definitely going to be people claiming he's just a meme though.
If you like lots of adjectives and a bizzare fevered dreamlike story that ends with the character dying or going insane, you will like lovecraft.
Be grand if all his stuff wasn't epistles that end with "Oh God in heaven they are at the door!!!ยงยงยง!"
I enjoyed Innsmouth too, but that was also one of the buggers.
>>8018226
>he assumes that racial degeneration had taken the town by storm.He's right.
>>8018226
For a 1930s pulp writer to have endured there has to be something of literary merit about their writing. In Lovecraft, and there are substantial short stories which are indeed worthy. However, one also has to negotiate through the doggerel and practice pieces when dealing with a book of Lovecraft's fiction; the author published them all, good or not, so that he could eat.
I will take kindly on you, OP, by pointing you in the right direction. Be assured, I have read a lot of Lovecraft.
Lovecraft's notable literary successes
>Call of Cthulhu
>Dunwich Horror
>Shadow Out Of Time
>Mountains of Madness
>Colour Out of Space
>Shadow Over Innsmouth
>Whisperer In Darkness
Here is where Lovecraft finds his unique mode of cosmic horror. He usually describes things by way of describing them elusively, or in part; thereby putting the reader at unease, or teasing their curiosity until the denoument.
Notable failures/practice pieces:
>Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
>Charles Dexter Ward
Just good Poe-esque gothic entertainment. Solid 7/10s if you like this sort of thing.
>Rats In The Walls
>The Hound
>The Outsider
>Pickman's Model
The reader will find everything else to be OK-tier.
>>8018226
Lovecraft is surprisingly realistic for a horror writer. His fiction reflects some of the sobering realities of Astronomy i.e. people are not important and the universe does not care about people.
>>8018226
He's one of the few authors that lives up to his reputation.
definitely a meme
>>8018456
Wasn't he also something of a neet for a while? I recall reading that he would have these feuds with other writers and they would talk shit through the magazine in which their shit was published. It was shitposting back in the day really...
>>8018226
If you have like Lovecraft-based stuff read Alan Moore's Neonomicon.
>>8018226
>does he actually write decent stuff
sure m8
>The night was dark, O reader Hark, and see Ulysses' fleet;
>All homeward bound, with Vict'ry crowned, he hopes his spouse to greet;
>Long hath he fought, put Troy to naught, and levell'd down it's walls,
>But Neptune's wrath obstructs his path, while into snares he falls...
The dude pretty much invented zombies. He's the Tolkien of horror.
>>8019162
>The dude pretty much invented zombies.
wut
>>8018226
I read his entire collection of short stories in April-May.
Some of his stuff was good, like The Whisperer in the Darkness, or the Thing on the Doorstep, or the Shadow Out of Time, but most of it was boring I thought.
His prose is awful, he has this English superiority issue. Despite growing up in the United States, he insists on using British spellings with our's and "Gaol", and in general it's awkward and difficult to grab on to.
Many of his stories are forgettable and generic, nothing he writes is truly terrifying, unless you're some sort of pussy or something.
I think he's a meme author who had a few good ones, and that's all people remember him for, so they revere him as an archetype for horror.
>>8019181
What did you think of the ballad of unkown kadath ? His best imo
>>8019181
>the Thing on the Doorstep
an anti-tranny story
no true man can settle to live in a girl's body!
>>8019185
Dreamquest of the Unknown Kadath?
I slugged through it. I honestly didn't give a shit about anything that was happening. It was just pages and pages of weird stuff happening, all under the pretenses of a dream, which really isn't something I enjoy reading.
>>8019179
Herbert West--Reanimator. Essentially the modern zombie as it is today, animalistic and dumb, tearing into human flesh.
>>8019193
yeah its not your thing
give the book to a kid and move on
fuck you and your rivers google holy shit
>>8019198
how about something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Halpin_Frayser
leaving aside frankenstein
>And with strange aeons even death may die
what did he mean by this?
>>8019206
Didn't know about this work, thanks.
>Frankenstein
Technically a zombie but nothing like the modern ones that I'm referring to. But it looks like there are earlier literature works of animalistic undead, so I'm wrong.
>>8019206
Frankenstein in no way prefigured zombies, the monster was entirely man save for his form
>>8019215
It's an edgy way of saying "These things are really old they live forever woah"
>>8019238
I always thought it meant they were so grand and weird, and deep time was so frightening, that the concept of death ceased to really apply to such forces.
>>8018966
Yes, he was a shut-in until his possessive mother died. Subsequently he married a Russian Jew, from whom he separated.
Lovecraft was a tremendously prolific letter writer who routinely missed meals so that he could afford postage. By correspondence he maintained friendships with many other authors, often in a mentoring role; Robert Howard, Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith.
Some of them he would visit during his extensive travels through New England, where he would visit old towns and investigate local histories.
>>8019215
Obviously saying that our place in the universe as conscious beings will end eventually, i.e. death will end because nobody is around to grasp dying as a concept.
>>8019181
Although I disagree with you, most his stories are indeed forgettable and generic but it's still pretty good chicken soup
I read him several years ago in middle school during which I was ignorant of Victorian prose and Lovecraft's personal quirks and I found his prose quite riveting and still do
>>8018226
In between, he's become a meme on the internet for some reason but his stories are pretty disturbing half of the time
>>8018226
He influenced HR Giger.
I've only read Call of Cthulhu during a break back in highschool but you can see his influence in a lot of horror.
