eta: and i get the notion of borrowing from previous texts (poe, homer) instead of just describing something yourself. i guess poe and homer were so alive to him that he didn’t feel the need to go into details, but to me great writing fucks you up instead of telling you how fucked up the narrator feels. yeah. some anxiety of influence would have helped him here i guess. go beyond poe, kill or erase or split from poe, or at least die trying. but anyway yes— a good idea. i agree with that when i see past my aesthetic prejudices.

ok i’ll stop with this. this is how poe sees his monster:

——

Uplifting my eyes from the page, they fell upon the naked face of the hill, and upon an object — upon some living monster of hideous conformation, which very rapidly made its way from the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally in the dense forest below. As this creature first came in sight, I doubted my own sanity — or at least the evidence of my own eyes; and many minutes passed before I succeeded in convincing myself that I was neither mad nor in a dream. Yet when I describe the monster, (which I distinctly saw, and calmly surveyed through the whole period of its progress,) my readers, I fear, will feel more difficulty in being convinced of these points than even I did myself.

Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of the large trees near which it passed — the few giants of the forest which had escaped the fury of the land-slide — I concluded it to be far larger than any ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line, because the shape of the monster suggested the idea — the hull of one of our seventy-fours might convey a very tolerable conception of the general outline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of a proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as the body of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was an immense quantity of black shaggy hair — more than could have been supplied by the coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this hair downwardly and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike those of the wild boar, but of infinitely greater dimension. Extending forward, parallel with the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a gigantic staff, thirty or forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure crystal, and in shape a perfect prism: — it reflected in the most gorgeous manner the rays of the declining sun. The trunk was fashioned like a wedge with the apex to the earth. From it there were outspread two pairs of wings — each wing nearly one hundred yards in length — one pair being placed above the other, and all thickly covered with metal scales; each scale apparently some ten or twelve feet in diameter. I observed that the upper and lower tiers of wings were connected by a strong chain. But the chief peculiarity of this horrible thing, was the representation of a Death’s Head, which covered nearly the whole surface of its breast, and which was as accurately traced in glaring white, upon the dark ground of the body, as if it had been there carefully designed by an artist. While I regarded this terrific animal, and more especially the appearance on its breast, with a feeling of horror and awe — with a sentiment of forthcoming evil, which I found it impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, I perceived the huge jaws at the extremity of the proboscis, suddenly expand themselves, and from them there proceeded a sound so loud and so expressive of woe, that it struck upon my nerves like a knell, and as the monster disappeared at the foot of the hill, I fell at once, fainting, to the floor.

—

notice how instead of screaming and moaning and repeating how it’s beyond and horrifying with so many adjectives and adverbs, he gives you a clear as fuck description so you can hallucinate it right along with him—and then he just faints.

i fucking love him.

(can’t help myself)

ok but philosophically though they’re the opposite—

one is saying: look at this horrors! they can be explained away by reason. (at least in these “tells of raciocination”. because in the telltale heart—no.)

the other is saying: reason (which explained away the old horrors) will open the door to new ones.

my problem again is these new horrors looked too much like the monsters of old. but ok ok ok *i will shut up now.*

Made it up to Chapter 8 so far. I'm trying to read more during weekends.

That's essentially it.

Obviously you wrote loads, too much to address properly, but I basically agree. As a writer he stands alongside names like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. Poe is a different class.

But as you eventually concede, HPL's vagueness is largely the point: he's demonstrating the futility of the human mind trying to describe things that by their nature are beyond our human understanding. Part of why the whole mythos is interesting to me and so many others is it provides a gradual piecing together of vague fragments of information only glimpsed at in individual stories, so you get a greater (though crucially never complete) sense of the whole. So the tingle you (and I) get from a single passage by Poe, I also get from the slow accumulation of information that HPL hints at across multiple stories.

oooh i see

sorta how lord of the rings leads to dungeons & dragons leads to modern rpg computer games and the whole “fantasy” sword & sorcery pulp genre and myriads of movies.

the prose stinks but the mythos informs all kinds of everything.

i see now. i should read the synopsis of all his work xD

(but seriously.)

I’ve missed a lot.


But I think it’s obvious that Lovecraft’s ideas have inspired some of the best works of horror and science fiction. His writing is not great literature, but it’s still great... I suppose the B movie comparison works, but I think it’s a bit harsh.

I think we can all agree that it’s the ideas behind his stories that make Lovecraft’s the true father of horror. It’s genuinely scary shit. The writing might not be top tier, butthe effect of the writing makes it great.

Very few writers can truly scare me. Lovecraft is one of them. And it creeps up on you. “The Picture in the House,” though short and simple, struck me like a bolt of lightning. The ominousness with which the threat is built up and conveyed to the reader is excellent. When I finished it, I just sat there for at least 10 minutes, meditating on the genuine fear I had experienced. It triggered a visceral response, so... I say it’s good shit.

Lovecraft’s work is not trash culture (like B-movies). It’s legitimately successful at what it sets out to do, which is to terrify.

I also think it has some merit philosophically. He fact that this man whose work focused so much on the infinitesimal smallness of man has terrified and inspired generations of horror writers says a great deal about the archetypal fears of human beings. It’s some primordial shit.

you’re terrified but i keep laughing at the frogman in the window!



ok i’ll read that painted house and cthulhu as well

but look at my objections up there and let me know

Ok, I will take a look. About halfway through now, but can’t finish just yet. Just wanted to let you know I’m paying attention.

“The Picture in the Room” is not a fan favorite. It’s a favorite of mine, personally. My girlfriend is huge on Lovecraft, and when I mentioned it to her she struggled to remember what it was. So maybe not the best place to start, but “Call of Cthulhu,” definitely.

ok i put the quoted text in bold to make it more readable (i think).

but yeah.

Kall of Kek-thulhu?





HPL's dirty little secret that rarely gets mentioned on fan-sites

oh ha ha ha

fuck him then. i’ll continue making fun of his bad writing.

one of my favorite writers, francisco de quevedo, a spanish from the golden age (16-17th century), was a fucking racist—but he was actually very funny. i don’t mean that his racist jokes made him funny— he was hilarious in general. but yeah he ridiculed the moors, vilified the jews, and was generally an upper class snot who made enemies everywhere. sure it was another era but you can spot a hater through the centuries—had a real poison pen. still talented as fuck though. VIDA DEL BUSCON is a fucking riot to read. and his poems— wow.

Yeah, I've read people make excuses for him, that it was just the time, but it seems that even by the standards of the age he was extreme. He came from old Providence society but his family lost all its money and he seemed to equate their decline with the arrival into America of what he called 'lower races'. The only real debate is the extent to which his politics fed into his actual mythos writing. Certainly it's there in stories like Shadow over Innsmouth.

It is what it is. I suppose. Like the whole Wagner thing.

Thanks for that demon, I'll mention it to my friend...maybe he'll change his tattoo? But not to Woodrow, who was equally bad... Fuck, speaking of rehab of racist asshats, how's about the new Winston C fluffing picture!

I thought we all knew Lovecraft was a disturbingly racist fuck... right?

I mean, “negro” and similar language about skin tone comes up in even his most popular writing.

But, Jesus, it was the 1930s. I can say with confidence that the writing (ideas) are awesome while knowing the author was a bigoted fuck just like roughly 33 percent of Americans today, and not feel bad about deriving pleasure from his stories.

Is that shitty of me? I mean, John Lennon put the N-word in a song title. Granted, it was a political statement from a much more progressive and evolved human specimen (though still terribly flawed).

Shit, am I a racism-apologist?

nah man, you’re just a nazi-lover :D :D :D

but no, seriously, it’s somewhat separable. i don’t buy the puritan credo of moral absolutism that leads to witch burnings. i’m jesuitic in my moral reasoning i guess. i see a lot of grey areas in human life and accept many failings and contradictions and try to see the good in the shit.

but he still sucks ha ha ha ha ha. yeah.

a beautiful sculpture is a beautiful sculpture regardless of the faults/beliefs/agenda/ignorance of the sculptor

the same goes for all works of art.

Literature is harder to accept as pure art because words are LOADED with semantic variation, causing people to apply the writer's own personality to the work being created, but it should still be viewed as pure art.

Get to fuck.

The story isn't about Churchill the anti-NHS, anti-welfare conservative dick. The story is about what happened, and what he did during WWII, and for that he was absolutely the right person for it. That leads to the film.

I remember a few years ago there was a massive poll done by the BBC about to find "the greatest Britain". Now, ignoring how ridiculous it is to ask something like that, Churchill came top of the poll. At the time I was baffled. It was too many people ignoring what he did outside of the war and going straight to flag waving patriotism. When it's something like that it's right to question him and who he was as a person. However, it can't be denied what he did for Britain during the war was very much for the benefit.

Thanks. I guess I see it things the same way (for the *most* part, not always — for instance, that rapper who kidnapped his girlfriend and raped her and tortured her and held her hostage? Yeah, fuck that cunt. Even if his music was good I wouldn’t listen) ... but I appreciate your use of the word Jesuitic, as I think it’s definitely a good word for it, and one I can understand.

Anyhoo, as a scientifically-minded, journalistically-inclined reader, I have some problems with Lovecraft’s studied “style” or lack thereof — a conflagration of what he perceived to be academic, journalistic and philosophical, though I think he had only a fleeting grasp of what any of those styles actually looked like when done *well.*

He’s kinda like a Don Draper (sorry, still addicted to Mad Men, almost done with it tho!) ... an legitimately brilliant “idea man” with only a child’s understanding of the very things he aspired to be, and eventually became.

I still think it’s far from bad writing, but I have my beefs, to be sure. And he got better over time too.

But yeah ... racist fuck, for suresies.

forget the word “negro” for a moment which even mlk and malcolm x used. just tell me what happened here? ‘in your own words,” as they say:

The professor had been stricken whilst returning from the Newport boat; falling suddenly, as witnesses said, after having been jostled by a nautical-looking negro who had come from one of the queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside which formed a short cut from the waterfront to the deceased’s home in Williams Street.

Dude was shoved down a hill (seriously). Keep reading.

homecheese was walking home, was jostled by a black sailor (probably from Ivory Coast) who had come from the shanties.

he makes it difficult. seriously. my eyes glaze over this shit.

i went over to the stupid clay tablet and the inspector and the professor and the “esquimaux”

life is too short for reading to be a painful chore. like eating a shit sandwich



yes yes obvious surprise the monster is gonna be real. no fuckin kidding. wings and tentacles. oooooo.

im much more afraid of dioxins

jeeezus there were so many great writers in the 20s why waste time with this jumbled garbage. i’ll read the clifff notes and be done. if someone offered to pay me to continue i’d turn down the job.

you wanna read something good go read ubu roi. it’s from 189fucking6 and way ahead of its time, not backwards.

much more readable than that trash

precipitous hillside where my huevos

Dude, fair enough, but his stories are the bedrock of an entire genre. For better or worse, dude was inventive as fuck.

There are some anthologies out there where other, better authors like Neil Gaiman and... I dunno, some others... write ABOUT Lovecraft characters, or in a Lovecraftian style. I haven’t read any of them, but maybe they’d be cool.
Gaiman is one of my favorites, and he’s taken Lovecraft’s love of made-up mythologies and pushed it into a more dynamic direction, where it’s not really Horror or even fantasy anymore, but something akin to (very) adult fairy tales, rooted in real mythologies, be they Celtcic, Norse or what have you.

Anyhoodle...

I remember that poll and felt the same as you when the result came in (I think I backed Brunel at the time) but I agree that, at possibly the most critical time in the Country's history, at leat in the modern era, he came into his own in a way I'm not sure anyone else would have.

what’s so inventive about “cyclopean” this or that? inventive were the people who came up with the cyclops.

anyway, sure, the aggregated mythology: i got it already when demoño explained it.

this is why i said i’ll read the cliff notes: to get the mythology without paying the troll toll.

but no fucking way i’m eating the shit sandwich.

—

ETA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos plus links

Those anthologies are obviously hit and miss but the better ones are excellent. Certainly not just fan-fiction.

If you want to sample one, Dead But Dreaming edited by Kevin Ross has some great stories.

If you want to try a single authored collection that's clearly Lovecraftian (without necessarily making direct references to the mythos) Thomas Ligotti's Songs of a Dead Dreamer/Grimscribe has some of the best horror writing I think I've ever read, period.

I think I read Pet Semetary in grade school because I liked the movie, but I'm too much of a snob to know what you guys are talking about.

But I'm curious: does horror really scare? I mean, are there really stories/novels that actually freak you out as much as a movie can?

I remember In Cold Blood scaring me when I read it in high school, so I know the written word can provoke fear, but I think Capote's book is far removed from the current discussion.

right? im scared about the possibility of a pair of real killers arriving to my doorstep. giant tentacles make me laugh.

and then theres dioxins. fucking dioxins everywhere

did you know that in england 80% of the population live within a couple of miles of a landfill?

now that would fucking frighten me if i were english

me, i have other problems, like living in a radioactive state where the baseball team is called “the isotopes”

im also scared of our real life ubu roi. the play is hilarious though.

Well, I didn't mean to disparage anyone who is scared by giant tentacles. I was just genuinely and non-judgmentally curious to know if that was really possible.

i might look at this one day

yeah i didn’t mean it disparaginly but maybe i was feeling a little salty after trying to read that piece of shit. it really made me fucking angry, like the music they play at the supermarket.

i can get scared by giant tentacles provided a physical stimulus, like with a movie where the surprise comes through the senses. then concept alone does not scare me. but the concept of a real life killer showing up at my house does— this is why i keep actual weapons.

this is the thing, i guess— good writing makes you hallucinate, bad writing is pins and needles in the eyes. vague words and inadequate syntax give me a headache.

maybe if someone could make me hallucinate the giant tentacles i would get scared. but the dead white longfaced shitbird with the clunky prose doesn’t. someone else might though.

oh i remember reading interview with the vampire ages ago. i wasn’t scared of vampires themselves, but i read it cover to cover in a hurry regardless cuz it was kinda thrilling.

Yes, we’ve talked about this before right? The Yellow King and whatnot? I actually thought he was pre-Lovecraft... ? Or am I just confused because his stories hop around in Time a bit?

Hmm... I remember finding free — apparently public domain — writings from some author you recommended online, and reading with the intention of learning more about the inspiration behind the (still unbelievable) True Detective season 1 (what with the Yellow King and all).

Huh.

ambrose bierce was the first one to come up with carcosa. then one robert chambers and lovecraft himself ripped off the name. the chambers dude added the yellow king. no—the king in yellow.

bierce also came up (thanks wikipedia!) with the monster that ends up as cthulhu’s half brother. h— something.

you ever read ambrose bierce? i’ve only read his devil’s dictionary and it’s hilarious.

“an inhabitant of carcosa” is in this book: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4366

which i’m tempted to read now

—-

i was just browsing inside the book and hastur is “god of shepherds” not a monster (yet).

Personally yes, some really do. But it's a different kind of scary to what I get from a film. Funnily enough I'd put Pet Semetary in the category of horror stories that I find genuinely frightening. But then, whatever else people might say about Stephen King, he's a horror writer that I'd say does scary better than almost anyone. Peter Straub's another one. On the other hand Poe's brilliant but I don't find his stories remotely frightening.

In Cold Blood is terrifying. Lovecraft is not *always* truly terrifying, and definitely never in the same way as ICB, but it’s possible to acknowledge that both are bloody terrifying.

So is, like “Wait until Dark”



No, giant tentacles” don’t scare me. But Lovecraft isn’t “giant tentacles.”
He wrote a lot of stories that have nothing to do with the Ancient Ones or the Cthuhlu mythos.

But, a lot of his stories deal with madness in various forms, and what causes it and how it descends upon someone (usually for goddamn good reasons, considering the circumstances)

The idea that humans are pawns in a scheme of beings that are malevolence incarnate, so beyond our capacity to imagine that mere knowledge of their existence is enough to drive us to suicide or worse, is scary to me.

Giant cosmic demons the size of small planets lurking under the sea, waiting for society’s collective anxiety to feed them and bring about an era of pure hatred and holocaust... that, in the right hands, is some scary shit. To me anyway.

Of course, every horror book you’ve ever read is a copy of a copy of a Lovecraft idea, so I’d understand if it didn’t work for everyone. Some people think Stephen King is terrifying. Do talking cars terrify you? King, like Gaiman, took pieces of Lovecraft and built his own style around it, in a different, far less literary, direction than Gaiman.

Either way, Horror is whatever scares you.

^^ in other words, fear/paranoia/anxiety scares me.

The idea of fear/paranoia/anxiety are not simply a BAD perspective on a beutral reality, but are actually the most ACCURATE, and ultimately MERCIFUL of mindsets, because these feelings suggest that you are at least partially aware of a “real” reality so horrifying it can’t be perceived.... that idea scares me.

Scares the fuck out of me.

Yeah, devil’s dictionary and perhaps some short stories? Name very familiar. On bookcase somewhere. Will solve mystery.

But no, clearly I’m not a devotee. Read Devil’s Dictionary and a few others maybe.

devils dictionary used to sell as those $1 dover thrift editions and had a red cover and you could pick up anywhere. the internet i think killed that business model.

anyway i agree with you that horror is whatever scares you but i have a bone to pick with the notion that hatecraft is at the root of every horror story one has ever read. i mean this statement:


we’ve had stories and myths of ghosts and demons and monsters and evil gods and witches and fairytales and scary religions since the dawn of time.

hatecraft himself cites poe and some bulwer dude i had never heard of, then invokes polyphemus and used the world cyclopean because obvious cyclops. and that’s just on page one.

regarding modern fiction, books like frankenstein and dracula were way before and vampires are now everywhere.

i mean even wuthering heights is a fucking work of horror. come on.

but before?

the myth of orpheus is fucking horror.

the book of revelation is a work of horror.

the book of job, where satan and god make bets on the life of some dude. talk about out of control cosmic shit.

the twelve stations of the cross, horror

the snake in the garden of eden

little red riding hood

the divine comedy

the punishments of the titans defeated by the olympian gods

the myth of ragnarok

the popol vuh

etc etc etc

(existence itself is a work of horror, and we’ve been telling stories about that since forever)

however influential the guy might be today (e.g. he’s clearly a big influence on joss whedon) he didn’t come up with his shit from the vacuum. if anything it’s a pastiche of previous attractions. huge demons from under teh sea—hello, leviathan? the kraken? captain nemo fighting a giant plate of calamari? (ha ha). sailors since time immemorial have been terrified of giant underwater creatures which have accrued layers and layers of significance in their evolution. oh, the mesopotamian goddess tiamat is the oldest i know of.

the more i read about this the more i see demonyo’s point. looks like he was a kind of seed for a very large fictional universe like the one tolkien begat in the fantasy genre. (but tolkien also borrowed from earlier mythologies and sagas and a lot more). and it’s become large and coherent in a way he never intended. but to paraphrase obama, he didnt do that.

anyway seems like lovecraft has had a lot of homages and imitators in our day, but he himself was paying homage and imitating his predecessors. who are legion.

which, you know, is perfectly fine, because it’s what literature always does anyway.

i understand that he can be an important nexus in the genre, but that’s not the same as him having invented everything.