I latched onto a collection of Lovecraft's works a few months ago. I've been absolutely loving every second of it thus far. The fictional universe he created is just detailed enough to be believable and just fantastic enough to be interesting. And the stuff is ACTUALLY FRIGHTENING.

Yes, I mean the stuff is actually legitimate horror. It has none of the flaws of modern horror (lulz dood killin shit ar scary. stoopid teenagrs. lulz orgies an murderin!) and all the strengths of classic literature. It's just... wow. There is no other way to describe it. Wow.

Fortunately, his stuff is all public domain at this point, so I can link you to archives of his stuff for you to read

I'd suggest "The Rats in the Walls", "The Colour Out of Space", and "The Call of Cthulhu" for starting out. "The Music of Erich Zann" and "The Dunwich Horror" are my favorites so far.

I feel he was a great idea man, but a terrible writer.

hpkomic
I feel he was a great idea man, but a terrible writer.

It is only our continued friendship that keeps me from tearing into you for that comment.

A lot of people say that Lovecraft wasn't a "good" writer, but it always comes across to me the same as when highschool kids groan that Shakespeare "sucks". It's not that he was a terrible writer, but that he isn't contemporary anymore...or that they simply don't get it (usually the later).

In the vein of "not getting it" and "not contemporary"...Lovecraft was, a self-admitted Anglophile. Because of this, he tended to use a lot of antiquated English phrases and language in his writing. Once you get past that initial hurdle of the language barrier, Lovecraft was a writer who was amazingly adept at atmosphere...something a ridiculous number of modern authors are so very mediocre at. When he wanted you to be scared, you were. When he wanted you to speculate at what was coming, you did. The absolutely BEST part of all, I feel, was that he almost ALWAYS left it to your imagination to fill in the blanks. Lovecraft rarely ever SHOWED you the monster, the Elder thing, the nameless terror that would tear your sanity screaming from your mind just to behold it. It didn't matter that he didn't show you...by the time the opportunity presented itself to do just that, you had already conjured up such horrible images in your mind that you couldn't help but sleep with at least a hall light on. Which, if you think about it, is great...seeing as how so much of Lovecraft's writing was directly influenced by his own terrifying nightmares.

The problem isn't so much his writing, as it is the horribly watered-down and prettied-up version of "horror" that people expect these days. If it doesn't have a cast of impossibly pretty teens, buckets of blood and guts and the oh-so-typical axe/knife/chainsaw-wielding lunatic, or the CGI monster, or the rubber suit...it's dubbed as "lame". Gore does NOT equal horror, and that's something the world has forgotten in an age where pushing the envelope of offense is more important than the story that leads to the violence.

Sorry, got off on a bit of a rant there. Damn kids today with your pokemon and your anime! *shakes angry old man fist*

Kudos to you, Rich, for getting on the Lovecraft bandwagon! He remains my favorite author 20 years after my grandfather first gave me nightmares reading it to me at bedtime.

hpkomic
I feel he was a great idea man, but a terrible writer.

I'd concur somewhat. For one thing he was definitely handicapped a bit by his adherence to the conventions of the day... All that stuff about "finding" accounts in lost journals and not knowing if it's true or not :)

A very small criticism, but man oh man that one was overused. The other two bad ones are where a character gets told the story by some disturbed person, or the character has a dream. lol!

BUT, with his contemporaries, he came up with some great ideas and ways of thinking about horror and disturbing concepts. I mean, it follows on from the work of people like William Hope Hodgson, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, and Robert W. Chambers, but he really crystallised their spooky concepts into something more tangible and defined the genre at the time.

It makes me feel better when people say genius's work sucks. After all, I'm crucified every other day by tons of people. I know I'm an excellent idea man, but how can you not love some of my horrible comics.

That said, what I've read of old H P was brilliant. I don't know what you read Dave, but seriously reconsider that opinion.

“Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple fulgurous sky … formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scenes; forests of monstrous overnourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion … insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and daemon arcades choked with fungous vegetation …”

I am sorry, but it goes onto the point of just being silly and resulting in a person being sucked OUT of the story. The guy had some interesting ideas and laid foundations for future works, but his writing just reeked of "I am such an anglophile".

I don't see how people can construe that I hate the guy when I just find his writing to be bad. I honestly like Lovecraft and feel he did a lot for Horror, and I say that as a true and devout horror fantatic. But it's not his style that I like, but rather the substance. His writing was simply bloated and struck me as masturbatory in a literary sense.

So, I like Lovecraft, I like his stories. I like his contributions to Horror.
I just don't like his writing.

I dunno if that's a good example HP, I found that passage to be pretty visual and involving. My only criticism of it would be that it's a little to obvious, I prefer things to be more understated which is why I prefer the guys who came before him like Machen and Hodgson. :)

-edit- I am a bit disturbed by the apparent mischaracterisation of the word "Anglophile" as being someone who loves the English language. That's completely incorrect! Anglophiles love everything about Britain (mainly England); that's the institutions, way of life, culture, blah, blah, blah.

I think you're looking for the word "Lexophile". lol!

hpkomic
The guy had some interesting ideas and laid foundations for future works, but his writing just reeked of "I am such an anglophile".

I don't see how people can construe that I hate the guy when I just find his writing to be bad. I honestly like Lovecraft and feel he did a lot for Horror, and I say that as a true and devout horror fantatic. But it's not his style that I like, but rather the substance. His writing was simply bloated and struck me as masturbatory in a literary sense.

So, I like Lovecraft, I like his stories. I like his contributions to Horror.
I just don't like his writing.

I am confused...it sounds like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.
can you clarify what you mean?

ozoneocean
-edit- I am a bit disturbed by the apparent mischaracterisation of the word "Anglophile" as being someone who loves the English language. That's completely incorrect! Anglophiles love everything about Britain (mainly England); that's the institutions, way of life, culture, blah, blah, blah.

I think you're looking for the word "Lexophile". lol!

He actually WAS an Anglophile, ozone. It wasn't just the language he loved about England, it was it's rich history, myriad folklore, tradition, aristocracy, and so on. That's part of why he'd impose some of those "been here for centuries" characteristics on the American locales in his stories (or just make up American locales that had such characteristics). What I was referring to earlier was that his being an Anglophile was what lead him to using such antiquated language in his stories...not that the use of such language was what made him an Anglophile. The love of language was a symptom his his Anglophilia, not the entirety.

MrRiot
He actually WAS an Anglophile, ozone. It wasn't just the language he loved about England, it was it's rich history, myriad folklore, tradition, aristocracy, and so on. That's part of why he'd impose some of those "been here for centuries" characteristics on the American locales in his stories (or just make up American locales that had such characteristics). What I was referring to earlier was that his being an Anglophile was what lead him to using such antiquated language in his stories...not that the use of such language was what made him an Anglophile. The love of language was a symptom his his Anglophilia, not the entirety.

That is one of the things i love about Lovecraft, you don't see that stuff nowadays.

TheMidge28
I am confused...it sounds like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.
can you clarify what you mean?

... that I like his contributions, but not how he did them? I like his stories, but don't like his writing? When you strip away the excess there is a certian bleakness that's entirely enjoyable, but the excess is what I dislike?

Not sure how much clearer I can be.

hpkomic

TheMidge28
I am confused...it sounds like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.
can you clarify what you mean?

... that I like his contributions, but not how he did them? I like his stories, but don't like his writing? When you strip away the excess there is a certian bleakness that's entirely enjoyable, but the excess is what I dislike?

Not sure how much clearer I can be.

that clears it up more...but I don't think you can be dichotomic with a his work.
plus I was only asking a question for clarification because it appeared you were being contradictory with your post. If that offended you, I apologize.

How could I say anything bad about my creator?

The Lovecraftian arcs are some of the best ones in The Real Ghostbusters.
My experience with Lovecraft is mostly in that fashion... um, homaged.
Like, Lovecraftian monsters in Conan comics.
Or, the game Alone In The Dark.

Heh, the examples referenced were still more lexophile than anything else. ;)

Eh, Robert E Howard was a contemporary of Lovecraft's and a good friend (though correspondence), so the monsters in the comics based on his novels could be actually more "Howardian", just with some Lovecraft influence through their somewhat shared mythos. Like CS Lewis, Tolkien and friends, they riffed off each other.

As I say though, although he's known for the style, his main contribution was his particular take on it. Not it's invention.

I'd agree that he's a good idea guy but not such a great writer. The constant use of words like "cyclopian," "stygian," and "bactracian," make his stories kind of hard to understand. He uses words like that over and over again, it's crazy. I did like the Shuttered Room though.

Well he did write at a time when the meanings of those words weren't so obscure to classically educated people...

Lovecraft...

I think he was a great writer and an amazing idea man, but I just don't care for the pacing in his stories.

Like, it'll start out extremely slow. Then, around maybe halfway through the story, it speeds up. After that, it suddenly slows down again, becoming perhaps even slower than it was at the beginning of the story.

I don't know, maybe I'm just not yet mature enough to really appreciate his writing. I got through about a third of "At the Mountains of Madness" before I decided to put it down and try reading it again in a few years. (I did the same with Steven King's "The Eyes of the Dragon" a few years ago. When I picked up again recently, I found I couldn't stop reading it)

I think the thing about Lovecraft is he wrote alot. Some of it is the most amazing, beautiful, creepy stuff, some is just genre-y, but I'd say it all is above par, as far as style goes. And, yeah, some of it seems dated, but alot still resonates. And to make art that lasts, that's truly an achievement.

I've read every word of fiction Lovecraft's written (much of it two or three times) except for a handful of published pieces he wrote as a child, and I own a hardcover set of the Joshi editions of his work. Still, I don't think there's any need to defend his writing -- a lot of people don't understand classics.

Regarding the assertion in the first post that all of his work is out of copyright -- this is actually controversial in the case of his post-1923 work (which is most of it). More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft#Intellectual_property [en.wikipedia.org].