Rereading Lovecraft

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Spy_on_the_Inside

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If all this rereading of Lovecraft is inspiring you, you might want to check this out: Click!

It's an anthology looking for short stories based on Lovecraft's writing style. I'm working on a submission myself, but with you dedicating so much of your time to rereading the stories, you'll probably get a good idea of just what they want.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Ah yes, American novels. 100 pages of people lighting cigarettes and spitting using words you can't pronounce before getting shot and somebody's sister gets pregnant before the end. Death by tedium. "The Old Fart of the Sea" :)

Well, you can always read comic books. Er, graphic "novels".
 

Okelly65

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OOOOhhhh no not graphic novels....Just kidding. I've read several I thought were excellent. For some reason, many people think if it has pictures in it, its for kids.
 

C.bronco

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In high school, my Senior Paper was The Psychology of Horror In Modern Fiction. (Kudos to me for remembering that.) I covered physical, psychological and spiritual horror. I quoted H.P. Lovecraft for psychological, King's Salem's Lot for spiritual, and Slasher stories for physical.

I don't know if it was graded, or how well I did.
 

JCornelius

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I love Lovecraft for the prose. Just like Robert E Howard and Clarke Ashton Smith--all three self-made provincial poets from nowhere, and their dense, grotesque prose hums with energy and very frequently one sentence is worth 50 pages of modern writers in terms of impact. I re-read these people every year.

I also very much enjoy submerging into the British Elder Gods branch of Chambers, Machen, and Blackwood. Especially Blackwood.

But if I were to pick one thing from all those pre-WWII geniuses, I'd pick a Lovecraft book--The Dream Quest one. I discovered it in my late twenties and was floored--a thin novella which was mightier than LOTR. Later I saw Patrick Rothfuss put it at number 1 in his list of best fantasy ever, and I was glad someone else shares this sentiment.

I think Lovecraft doesn't write wrong. Everyone else writes wrong. And Tolstoy doesn't write boring books. Anna Karenina only seems boring to...well, let's not say boring people, but rather people in a more shallow period of their lives, IMO. God knows I've had my share of those periods.

Of course, the short American book full of people spitting out barely comprehensible lines while lighting one cigarette after another can also be wonderful, for example Hammett's contributions to the field.

A good pulp, or better yet, a glorious pulp, is a transcendental experience, and Lovecraft, just like Hammett, in his different way, is glorious pulp. And in our time of a potential resurgence of 'pulp' in the compressed, snappy version, thanks to the rise of e-books mainly, it makes total sense to re-read the old masters. Because sometimes a fight on the street is best described in Hammettian terms and a mystical experience in the woods is best described in Blackwoodian terms, and an out-f body experience with alien entities--in Lovecraftian terms--and it doesn't matter if all this takes place in a time of iphones and spy drones.
 
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Kevvy711

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I just started reading lovecraft. I bought a kindle edition with all kinds of his short stories. They are pretty good reads so far I have read a few of his stories people have recommended. I didn't know quite what to expect as I have heard lovecraft is such a legend. I really wanted to increase my reading of horror books, because it is my favorite genre. I hear some people do not like his writing style but I like most how it is in the first person and it gives me a feeling that I am with the character, and he really build up well the psychological horror as the stories go on. This is just based on five or six stories I have read, and I plan on reading a lot more!
 

The Resurrectionist

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Lovecraft was the very definition of that oft-quoted Tumblrism Your fave is problematic. I once wrote up a list of his stories that don't have any obvious prejudices in them as a favor for a friend, and that...took a while. (There are several, but they don't include most of his more famous works.)

What really hurts is to realize that most people in that time period thought that way as well.

Wasn't there a really horrible movie version of "The Colour Out Of Space" with Wil Wheaton, of all people, in it?
 
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Calla Lily

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Wil Wheaton? Oh dear.

There's a very interesting German version in BW with only the Colour having any, well, color. It's not bad at all, considering I lump all movies of HP's works into one big stinking pile of shit.

That being said, I have a soft spot for Karloff's Die, Monster, Die! because, Karloff. Also it chews mountains of scenery and "stars" Nick Adams :roll:

The greats Vincent Price and Lon Chaney Jr. starred in The Haunted Palace, a wacko Roger Corman adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Also worth a viewing when you need a good laugh, despite the presence of so much acting chops.
 

Tnonk

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Wow, I must be psychotic, er psychic.

I've never read Lovecraft. I'd heard about his writing for quite a while and knew about the Cthulhu mythos through reading Robert E. Howard (who was a correspondent with Lovecraft).

Anyway, the reason I said I was psychic was because, this weekend at Wal-Mart, I picked up H.P. Lovecraft - Great Tales of Horror, a hardback with 20 stories in it for only $7.97.
Then, I come to AW after it comes back on line and the first thread I see is this one.
Weird Huh?

But anyway, it's also odd that I'm coming back around to horror after so many years. Some of my first stories that I wrote were horror.
Now I'm currently starting tonight to read The Call of Cthulhu.

Adrian
 

Thomas Vail

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Lovecraft was the very definition of that oft-quoted Tumblrism Your fave is problematic. I once wrote up a list of his stories that don't have any obvious prejudices in them as a favor for a friend, and that...took a while. (There are several, but they don't include most of his more famous works.)

What really hurts is to realize that most people in that time period thought that way as well.

Wasn't there a really horrible movie version of "The Colour Out Of Space" with Wil Wheaton, of all people, in it?

The Curse IIRC. There was also a more recent movie retelling of The Dunwhich Horror which had Dean Stockwell in a prominent role, until he gets sucked into the sky via bad CG effect.

And At the Mountains of Madness is one of my favorite stories full stop, because it hits so many of the themes I love in fantastic fiction.
 

Ezekiel2517

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Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

HP was a God-awful bigot and a snob. He clung to certain words ("eldtirch", gah) like the newest of noobs in love with their own cleverness. He overwrote. He fell back on plot devices that wouldn't fool a middle-schooler.

And yet I love his work. He is one of the few writers to scare me in broad daylight, and he does it by creating a creeping sense of "don't look behind you" that ramps up and ramps up until you jump straight out of your chair at the least noise.

Plus, he achieved my deep-seated goal: He created a character so enduring that 100 years (ish) later it's still being written about and pastiched.

HPL was one of the true greats, despite his many flaws.

<--eternal fangirl

I don't get why every time HP is brought up someone has to talk about him being a bigot. Who cares? You are judging from 21st century. He was from olden oldy times. Why doesn't Abraham Lincoln get the same "he is a bigot" treatment every time he is brought up?

You could say his characters are bigots as his work seems to be 1st person, and the narrator usually ends up mad. So maybe he is really calling these bigot narrators crazy.
 

dondomat

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Surely you're not implying that Winston Churchill and George Washington were, especially by today's measures, racists and sexists and homophobes? Why that would be...that would be...that would be...that would be...that would be...

And Jack London and Robert Howard and Hemingway? No, that's simply...that's simply...that's simply...that's simply...

I mean, how dare they not be from 2015. or at least 1985. Some people just have no shame...
 

ironmikezero

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Scrutinize anything or anyone out of context, and you'll find that deductions and/or conclusions based thereon are inherently flawed and relatively useless. Nonetheless, some will insist on zealously defending their favoured delusions, as is their right to be frequently mistaken but rarely in doubt.

Judge not too harshly, for all writers/authors deserve due consideration within the context in which they laboured, and the benefit of a doubt.

Indeed, it takes all kinds. Think for yourself.
 

M.N Thorne

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Ezekiel2517,

You could defend Lovecraft all you want but he was more did just a bigot. Do you believe that everyone else was writing epic poems called "The Creation of N******"? How many other upper class New England writers wrote about characters calling their cats "N*****man"? His views are on severe flawed on women and minorities in real life. His characters are reflect on his own racial beliefs. He love white supremacy to its core. He hated non-Anglo-Saxons on a molecular level particularly blacks.Actually, he believe that non-whites are below sub-human savages and his thoughts on people of African descent is just mind-blowing racist even for 1920s. Sure, he was not burning black people's homes but he did create monsters that are black. His fear of the black woman could be suggested in his creation of Shub Nigguarth :) On a side note, I believe that Shub Nigguarth is a very powerful monster and her blackness is apart of her beauty. Meanwhile, the black goat could stand for his fear of black men's sexuality. I do not understand why people are so quick to believe that writers are just a product of their time. Frankly, Lovecraft's racism makes his stories even more magical and wonderful because he truly thought people like myself are monsters. He was not driven by madness but by his racist views.

I don't get why every time HP is brought up someone has to talk about him being a bigot. Who cares? You are judging from 21st century. He was from olden oldy times. Why doesn't Abraham Lincoln get the same "he is a bigot" treatment every time he is brought up?

You could say his characters are bigots as his work seems to be 1st person, and the narrator usually ends up mad. So maybe he is really calling these bigot narrators crazy.
 

M.N Thorne

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You are so right, ironmikezero. How can we judge a man who wrote " The Creation of N*****" so harshly. Under that type of thinking, no one should judge "Mein Kampf" or "The Turner Diaries" too harshly either. :) However, there is an audience for everyone and anyone.


Scrutinize anything or anyone out of context, and you'll find that deductions and/or conclusions based thereon are inherently flawed and relatively useless. Nonetheless, some will insist on zealously defending their favoured delusions, as is their right to be frequently mistaken but rarely in doubt.

Judge not too harshly, for all writers/authors deserve due consideration within the context in which they laboured, and the benefit of a doubt.

Indeed, it takes all kinds. Think for yourself.
 
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quicklime

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anyone who loves Lovecraft (and I am not weighing in, as both sides have valid points) and wonders what might have happened if he and JK Rowling made a love-baby should really check out "A Night in the Lonesome October". It is like the movie "League of Extraordinary Gentleman" only fun, and like Lovecraft but with the understanding a lot of Lovecraft was borderline silly.

Read it. Zelazny died not terribly long after, it was one of his best books and, had there been such a genre as MG, would have been one of the books things like Harry Potter got compared to. Not to diss Potter, but just sayin, the book hit obscurity mostly for being 20 years early and for no other reason.
 

BWretched

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Ugh... I never was able to get into Lovecraft. It's not like I tried reading and I didn't finish. For just some reason, it hasn't worked out.

Is there a good story to begin with or does it not matter?

My favorite Lovecraft story will always be The Outsider. I think it's a pretty easy read.
 

Kevvy711

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I just got done reading whispers in the darkness by lovecraft and I was sick of the same old story in the first half of his monsters but the second half of the story really picked up and I ended up liking it more than any others of his stories. He has that kind of effect but the monster from outer space seem to be to overdone in all his chutulu stories.
 
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