Why does everyone have a hard on for H. P. Lovecraft?
He's a really deep author, unafraid to explore the dark depths of the unknown, much unlike contemporary authors like Brian Sanderson or Margaret Weiss.
Where is this sea of erection? Nothing but hate for this garbage here.
Also not well loved in sjw territory. Named his cat niggerman.
He is not loved by the 'mainstream' and his terrible prose sure as hell aren't loved in academia.
I think by 'everyone' you mean 'everyone' on certain plebeian sites/boards.
>>7728023
Hi, Houellebecq.
>>7728026
Reddit and tumblr, mostly. A lot of people love his garbage because "DUDE CTHULHU LMAO" in spite of his racism.
>>7728015
Because he invented a subgenre of horror that has grown and developed, but because of what it defined, but because it has brought up the idea of what we don't know more than what we do
What he wrote about can usually be seen as hokey and silly now, but its what's underneath the surface, the fear of being completely insignificant, the truth that we don't know, and the idea that finding out what is true of the universe is sometimes so outside of our understanding of reality that it can drive someone insane in their quest to grasp it has actually happened, and happens everyday
Because his work was more than just a set of principles that he created himself, but was also exposing something in us as humans that most of us ignore for our entire lives, or simply deny
The fact is that he was just pointing out something that was already there and wrote around it, but he was the first writer who did this that had mainstream success, and such ideas could be spoken about widely and accepted
The biggest tragedy is that he had a pretty shitty life and felt widely unfulfilled for most of it, if only he could see the phenomenal affect his work has had on future generations, perhaps somewhere somehow he will
>>7728057
Well its a pretty good way to judge.
Along with "Do you drink?" and "Do you believe in god?" it would pretty much cover it no?
>>7728100
I'm not saying it's a bad way to judge. I'm just saying to be honest family.
>>7728100
>implying "do you drink" covers everything you need to know about a human being in order to determine their value as a friend
plebs/autism, ladies and gentlemen.
The monsters seem dumb because of all the movies that depict monsters
But still it wasn't about the monsters. It was the fact that we weren't alone and nobody gave a shit.
>you will never read the entire lovecraft canon for the first time again
>>7728383
>you will never read the entire lovecraft canon for the first time again
In doing this right now, about halfway through. I don't know what to feel.
>>7728389
If it seems tedious you won't get anything out of it.
It's one of those either you love it or hate it things.
>>7728392
Not tedious, more like hit or miss. Some things I liked very much, say Call Of Chtulhu, Dexter Ward, Dunwich Horror and Colour Out Of Space.
But other things like dream quest of anything pertaining to his fantasy dreamland I found pretty boring. Maybe that's just me but I think he was far better suited for horror than fantasy.
>>7728015
He is shit.
I've read most of his stuff and I could hardly stand the repetitive, verbose nature of the stories after maybe half a dozen of them.
He was a true artist. He expressed himself in a way which made most people dismiss him as a creepy autist but maintain his output and kept toiling in obscurity until someone finally saw his talent. Houellebecq's book about his life ("Against the World, Against Life") is a great mini-biography and book of theory about his life and works and communicates the fact that he had very high standards of himself and other people. A true original. Literally RIP in pieces.
>>7728015
Very purple prose, very atmospheric writing that's entertaining, almost entirely short stories and novellas so easily digestible, influential on genre fiction and racist.
It's almost custom made for /lit/.
>>7728023
Nice bait.
>>7728100
*God
>>7728523
>much UNLIKE
That post wasn't bait.
Fantasy written for the sake of fantasy is always, ALWAYS trash.
The only good fantasy is that in which the fantastic elements are used as a means to convey something else and not as an end unto themselves. See : Le Guin, Wolfe, Tolkien.
>>7728533
I'm sure an all-powerful, all-knowing deity that encompasses all of time and space pays the UTMOST attention to whether or not you capitalize its name while shitposting in a mongolian wall-painting convention.
>>7728015
Because he's a good writer?
What is it with litfags and NEEDING to be sanctimoniously critical about what's popular? You must be the saddest motherfuckers alive.
Reading some of these threads it makes me think you people don't even read books or, if you do, you just read for the sake of reading, as if reading the dictionary would be as enjoyable for you as reading Jules Verne.
Lovecraft got to the point, and his books couldn't be cut in half by removing redundant adjectives. Pic related, it's an attempt at a 'dissonant themes' meme I made for an OC thread a while back. The only words I removed were 'I think', sure, those TWO WORDS were superfluous, but it's better than most fantasy. All in all, an 8/10 intro.
>>7728549
Haha you sure told me! I tip my fedora in your directing, enlightened gentleman!
>>7728566
Are you the guy the corrected him about a missing capital letter?
If so, you're ironically misusing the fedora meme.
>>7728545
T H I S.
I was a Wolfe defener in a thread last night, and I said almost exactly this in a much more verbose way.
Fantasy has the potential to be a mere aesthetic choice, but it's used as a crutch for a lack of ideas all too often.
>>7728413
dream-quest of unknown kadath is surely one of his better things, but what about Rats in the Walls? (heavily riffing on House on the Borderland, wghich is very fantastic)
>>7728624
I liked Rats too. Especially how he implied disgusting cannibalistic rites without actually describing them or even using the words.
You got a picture in your head all the same, and it wasn't pretty.
Kadath didn't do much for me. I guess I like his horror stuff better, I don't know.
>>7728545
>Fantasy written for the sake of fantasy is always, ALWAYS trash.
I agree with that; but, other than his hate hate for negroes, Lovecraft's writing has very little content.
>>7728654
I read Kadath right at the end of the enormous Necronomicon anthology, so it had an added significance and it felt like a capital on top of all his more fantastic works and the mythos, so I was reading it in extra-normal conditions. Rats in the Walls is, I think, a very good synthesis of the low-fantasy style with some of his more high flown ideas, so that one gets their sweet juices without wading through turgid prose (it was years ago that I read it so you'll get nothing more intelligible other than recommending house on the borderland).
Why did Cthulhu go back to sleep at the end of the story? I thought if he woke up everyone died.
I didn't read a single word by him, but I surely will. He's not an author you can pass on, simply stated. And I don't care about his racism in the same way I don't care about his way of eating or dressing or talking. Man and author are different things.
Anyway, months ago I was reading The Silmarillion and got to Ungoliant. I have a moderate (I was writing motherate, what a freudian lapsus, damn, english is not even my first language), moderate fear of spiders and always thought they seem alien, not belonging to this earth. And Tolkien "nailed" it, let's say. Now Ungoliant is a Maia (kind of demigod, basically) and Melkor himself is scared (!!!) when he sees her drink light from Valinor's wells --- we can say that a man in his place could have easily lost his mind.
So we have a gigantic demigod coming from space, frantically scaring and horrifying (she devours herself in the end, it seems). The only thing missing is people worshipping her (totally unrealistic in Tolkien), but the rest is very lovecraftian. Just a curious coincidence though, since it's improbable that Tolkien was influenced by Lovecraft.
When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.
>>7728034
Nice post, man.
>>7728484
Nice ideas though. Abandoned megacities in Antarctica, sunken cities under the ocean, ritual sacrifice cults that worship some cosmic horror, man copulating with an alien monstrosity and the hybrid offspring it births, lost and forbidden knowledge in forgotten libraries accessible only by dreams. The idea that there is millions of years of lost history, which he fills in to explain various gaps in the fossil record and how evolution occured as these various alien lifeforms died off.
It's all still very comfy today. Try reading other sci-fi authors from the 20s, its a lot of cringe rocket ships and flying cars and robot butlers and ray guns, never taking risks with a story just replacing characters with then contemporary toys.
